Tag Archives: ethics

MM McCabe and Clare Moriarty at ‘The Forum’, next week

07 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by in Events, Public talks

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Strong Feelings

Does anger impede political progress or is it essential for change? Does love make us biased or is it the foundation of ethical thinking? Might shame alter not merely our perception of the world, but the very world itself? Reason is often contrasted with emotion, but what if emotion is essential for understanding traditional philosophical ideas? And how did we end up thinking that reason could ever do without emotion? (more details)

Next week: 14 November, 18:30 — 20:00

Venue: Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building, LSE, London, WC2A 3LJ United Kingdom

Claire will chair and MM will be a speaker.

 

Love Drugs

14 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by in Essays, Ideas

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

By Ashley Owen

There are so many interesting topics in the area of human enhancement that it’s hard to pick just one to write about. One issue that prompted a lot of discussion in a recent seminar was regarding ‘love drugs’, touched on briefly by Allen Buchanan in his book ‘Beyond Humanity?’ but covered in greater detail in articles by Julian Savulescu and many others.

The idea is that in the near future we will be able to use chemical/biological enhancements to affect our relationships, for example by enhancing the bond between two people, or reducing the possibility of one partner (or both) being unfaithful. Several studies (on oxytocin in particular) indicate that this is a genuine possibility. Many people in the seminar were uncomfortable with this type of enhancement, but couldn’t quite pin down precisely why. In this post, I hope to elucidate those worries, and examine whether or not they are well grounded.

One idea that arose was that these types of drugs pose a threat to free will (assuming we have it). I’m not convinced this worry is well-founded however. The types of intervention at issue are not so strong as to compel someone to unavoidably act or feel a certain way (like ‘love potions’ in films). Instead, they increase the likelihood of certain behaviours or emotions – behaviours or emotions that the person taking the drug wants to do or feel. Consequently, the possibility to not act that way still remains open. In this sense, such drugs wouldn’t be a shortcut to a perfect relationship, but just another tool people could use if they felt it appropriate, like marriage counselling or date nights. We’re generally comfortable with people taking measures to try and influence their future behaviour, including their behaviour in relationships, without thinking that it removes our free will, so we would need a reason to think that the biomedical nature of the enhancement makes these cases different.

Moreover, the relevant cases are ones where the person choosing to take the drug – assuming she is in a position to make a rational, informed choice – is doing so because she wants her life to turn out a certain way, and is taking the drug in order to help her achieve that goal. That appears to be a free choice. In contrast, generally in relationships, the way we feel and act doesn’t seem to be entirely the result of our own free choice, as it is in part determined by biological factors – most of which are outside our control and have evolved through natural selection. Evolution is only concerned with survival and reproduction, whereas we have a multitude of values and goals that may well override at least reproduction (and most of us in the affluent world don’t have to worry too much about survival). The availability of love drugs could be seen as giving us the opportunity to guide our lives in accordance with our values, rather than be subject to outdated adaptations that are not relevant to our values.

Perhaps what makes people more concerned about love drugs than other enhancements, such as drugs to improve cognition, is that they have a significant impact on someone other than the person taking the drug – namely that person’s partner. While this wouldn’t be a problem if both parties felt the same way and were both taking the pill, it’s not hard to imagine that some people might react badly to finding out that their partner was taking such a drug. They might feel that it reflected badly on them and how their partner felt towards them, or that it rendered their relationship inauthentic somehow.

I think authenticity is more of a concern, although perhaps not insurmountable. If being authentic is understood as being somehow ‘true to ourselves’, it’s not clear that two people choosing to take a chemical to enhance their relationship would necessarily be rendering that relationship inauthentic. It would probably depend on the exact nature of the enhancement being used. For example, taking oxytocin in couples therapy to promote trust and communication in order to increase the chance of the therapy being successful seems to align with the authentic desire of the couple to overcome the problems in their relationship. On the other hand, if the only way someone could stand to be in a relationship with their partner was by taking a drug, that would be problematic. Although that person could be said to genuinely want to love their partner, it might not be so easy to describe the resulting love they feel having taken the drug as authentic. Certainly their partner would probably not feel it was. Having said that, the literature suggests that despite being referred to as ‘love drugs’, such pills would not create love out of nowhere, but instead enhance love that already exists – which could diffuse at least some of the worries about authenticity, as presumably the drugs wouldn’t work in cases such as this one.

Attraction and attachment are affected by a multitude of factors, many involuntary. For example, an increase in adrenaline, such as from being in a frightening situation, makes it more likely that you will feel attracted to someone. We don’t tend to consider such involuntary biological changes to render relationships inauthentic, but perhaps that’s just because we’re not consciously aware of them, which is part of what makes love so mysterious. By making the option available to voluntarily induce certain feelings, perhaps we risk losing what makes them so valuable to us.

In our drive to understand love, we may well be stripping away some of the mystery. However, if we can use that understanding to improve our relationships – which are so important for happiness, longevity, health etc – then perhaps that’s not necessarily a bad thing. And if ‘love drugs’ can help us to enhance relationships that we value, perhaps that’s not necessarily a bad thing either – but I think that the circumstances and motivation under which they were taken would have to be quite specific in order to overcome the concern about authenticity.

References

Allen Buchanan. 2011. Beyond Humanity? Oxford University Press.

Savulescu J , Sandberg A. 2008. Neuroenhancement of love and marriage: The chemicals between us. Neuroethics 1 ( 1 ): 31 – 44.

Williams, Pluralism, and Evil People

22 Tuesday Sep 2015

Posted by in Essays, Ideas

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

By Jake Wojtowicz

I want to sketch out a familiar idea from Bernard Williams’s ethics, and then offer a problem, alongside some things we might say in reaction to it. I’m far from well versed on the literature here, and the earlier stuff, which I present in a fairly brief manner, is what I know more about – but I don’t think that people will be as interested by a fairly arcane piece about the distinction between commitments and ground projects. So, although I won’t say much new here, I think it opens up plenty of avenues for debate. The sort of problem I’m considering, which turns around value pluralism, could affect others, such as Isaiah Berlin, and if anyone could point out avenues to explore, that would be good. But, really, the point of this is meant to be getting some discussion going – so that’s what I hope to do.

In his critique of utilitarianism, Bernard Williams offers a couple of examples. Jim can shoot an Indian to save nineteen, or not shoot and twenty will die. I think his other example, George, gets the point across in a slightly clearer way, so let’s go with that. George is a scientist, he’s just finished his PhD, and he’s pretty poor. He’s offered a job. If he takes the job, he’ll be able to support his family (his financial straits are causing problems for them), but the job is in chemical and biological weaponry, and George isfundamentally opposed to working in that industry. If he takes the job then he’ll not only be able to support his family, but will prevent it going to a warmongering zealot – who would greatly profit the cause of chemical weaponry by working overtime (which George could avoid). So, the utilitarian says George obviously should take the job, since it will maximise happiness: his family will do better, and fewer people will die since the zealot won’t be making chemical weapons into even greater killing machines.

But Williams thinks that George should be able to say “No” to the job. George has a commitment to pacifism, and that’s not the sort of thing he can just throw away. (Elsewhere he talks of ground projects, and categorical desires, but the distinction between these three things is messy at best, so let’s just work with commitments.) In short, commitments are vital to anything like a valuable human life. Without them, life is not worth living. (Elena Makropulos, in his famous paper on Death, has no commitments, and is utterly bored.) Basically, and this is far more complex and deserves far more space than I’ll give it, Williams’s point is that utilitarianism doesn’t deal with proper human agents. Utilitarianism doesn’t let you keep any commitments, because anything you might seem to be committed to cannot really be something you’re committed to, since as a good utilitarian you have to be willing to abandon it whenever doing so would increase happiness – and commitments aren’t abandonable in such a way. But commitments are a vital part of a valuable human lives, so utilitarianism cannot really account for valuable human lives.

There are two other things in Williams that are relevant here. First off, his internalism about reasons. This is the thought that one cannot have a reason to do something, unless one, in some way, wants to do it. So, if Owen doesn’t want to join the army (nor does he have any desires that, to be satisfied, require him joining the army), then he has no reason to. Second off, you get throughout Williams the idea that there is a plurality of values, and that there can be tragic conflict between values – such that there is no way of avoiding awful problems (see, for instance, Moral Luck). The plurality about values gives us something else: that it’s fine to go against these purportedly-moral demands. There are more values than the merely moral, and we would much rather live in a world full of many different values than just the one: be that moral, aesthetic, or whatever. So, sometimes we might do something that is morally bad, but aesthetically good – but that’s better (in some sense) than always doing the morally good thing.

But then we get some sort of problem. It’s supposedly fine for George to go by his commitment to pacifism, against the moral demand for the greater good. But what about a Himmler figure? Himmler had a commitment to antisemitism. Why might we think it is ok for George to stick to his pacifism, for Anna Karenina to abandon her child in the name of Love, and for people to spend their time in galleries rather than working for the poor, but be repulsed if someone like Himmler offered the thought: “Ah, but genocide is what makes my life worth living!”? What’s more, we want to be able to say something to Himmler – what can the Williamsian say?

Now, one line I used to think was worth pursuing, but am no longer so sure of, focuses on Jim. Jim, if he sticks to his pacifism, condemns twenty people to death. Himmler, if he sticks to his form of antisemitism, condemns millions. Perhaps we might want to say something about expected-sacrifice. We might say that abandoning one’s commitment is something like suicide. Now, sacrificing yourself to save twenty people might be the sort of thing we think is supererogatory – but we might think it’s expected that you would do so if it were to save hundreds, thousands, or millions; so this might legitimate Jim’s actions, but not Himmler’s. But that won’t do – since it would rule out George refusing the job, since his actions might, in some sense, lead to the deaths of many people (think Oppenheimer). So, I’m not sure this is the way we can go.

Now, although there can be no recourse to some free-floating external reason that bans Himmler from setting out on his genocide, we might be able to show that Himmler has a clash of desires, or has got the facts wrong. Perhaps he wants to do the best by the human race, and also eliminate the Jews. If we can show him that Jews are part of the human race, and that his desire to do best by the human race outweighs his desire to kill the Jews, then we might be able to get him to cease his evil ways.

But if he’s utterly set on genocide, and there are no competing desires, and we can’t show our Himmler that he’s gotten something factual wrong, then what might the Williamsian say? Well, we can’t reason with Himmler. But we might be able to use other persuasive techniques – like calling him “cruel”. Though, this will only work if Himmler cares for what we say to him. But, perhaps we don’t even want to reason with this sort of figure. If we can’t reason, and he goes off and tries to complete his project, what can we do? So long as there’s one of us who doesn’t much mind it – who doesn’t have some very strong commitment against just-killing – we might find someone willing to put a bullet in Himmler: would there be anything wrong with that?

But what gives us a right to decide which other commitments we want to exist alongside? What I’ve just said concerns motivating Himmler, trying to get him back to the right side. What justifies our insistence on our values over his? And that seems to be a real problem: once you get rid of the idea that there might be one overarching value, then how to decide between others, and how to decide whether or not something is valuable or is utterly awful and should form no part of the things we pursue, becomes really, really, hard.

Someone of an Aristotelian frame of mind might want to say that we could look to a plurality of values that are constrained by what it means to be a good human – there are plenty of questions to be begged here, but it’s a path that might be worth pursuing. Or, and this is something I want to look at more, we might want to say that some things might be worth pursuing even if they cause great harm, but what we can’t do is something evil. Perhaps some bad things realise other values, or even are just bad, but aren’t the sort of thing that pose much overall threat; but evil things are totally abhorrent and in some way infect other things. But that, as it stands, sounds a bit twee and needs a lot of work – and it seems like it might fall back on some Aristotelian considerations.

Or maybe there just is no way to decide. There’s nothing that makes our values better than Himmler’s. So if we were to appeal to some independent omniscient court, there would be no settlement. The only thing we can do is persuade, cajole, and fight. But that doesn’t do justice to our view that we’ve got something right and he’s got something wrong – though, nor does it do justice to his view that he’s got it right and we’ve got it wrong. Unsettling. But perhaps it’s a bullet I might bite.

Anyway, I think the Williams line against utilitarianism (and, really, all moral systems) is persuasive. And I’m a big fan of a plurality of values. But I’m still a little stuck, and not sure where to go when we face a Himmler figure. What puts us in a better position than someone who seems to say “Evil, be thou my good.”?

References

Williams, B A O. “A Critique of Utilitarianism.” In Utilitarianism for and against, by B A O Williams and J J C Smart, 75–150. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.

———. “Internal and External Reasons.” In Moral Luck, 101–13. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

———. “Moral Luck.” In Moral Luck, 20–39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

———. “Persons, Character and Morality.” In Moral Luck, 1–19. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

———. “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality.” In Problems of the Self, 82–100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.

Living Longer, Staying Human

17 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by in Essays, Ideas

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

By Ben Davies

Nicholas Agar has come up with an interesting objection to the idea of radical life extension (RLE), a prospective set of technologies that aim to significantly extend our lifespans by preventing us from ageing, thereby making us “negligibly senescent” (NS). Agar recommends a ‘species-relativism’ about value that he thinks speaks against RLE. Essentially, things that have value for one species may lack value for another species. I can acknowledge that a dog is very happy, perhaps happier than I am, but still be glad that I am not a dog because certain things that I currently value are only valuable to humans. Crucially, this argument is supposed to apply if we improve rather diminish our capacities. A hyper-intelligent alien might find the great works of human literature to be trite and unimaginative, but it would be a genuine loss for me to come to such a conclusion about something that I currently value by enhancing my own intellect, even if I would have objectively more valuable experiences in such a state. Agar suggests that RLE will make us ‘posthuman’, and that species-relativism shows that this is a bad thing.

Clearly, the argument only works if Agar can demonstrate that RLE makes us posthuman, and so if we adhere to Agar’s definition of what it is to be in, and thus to leave, the human species. He starts by defining species as a “group of populations whose members are capable of interbreeding successfully and are reproductively isolated from other groups”. To leave a species, then, one must face “reproductive barriers” between oneself and members of the species. Although we are very similar to gorillas, we cannot reproduce with them, and so we are separate species.

The effects of RLE that constitute reproductive isolation are fourfold. First, Agar believes that long lives will make us extremely risk averse. We will have much more to lose through death (since we would have much more life ahead of us). So we will eschew many activities that humans enjoy, namely activities that would lead to sudden death (e.g. a car crash; drowning; being struck by lightning) rather than gradual death (accumulated damage that will be reparable by RLE techniques e.g. smoking; eating fatty food). Our interests will thus realign towards gradually damaging activities, and away from potential sudden damage. We should note that the activities that will be too risky for NS persons are things that we do without a thought today, such as going for a drive or swimming in the sea; NS persons will thus retreat from the world.

Second, Agar thinks that NS persons will be much more prone to illness; their unchanging genetic makeup will mean that their immune systems cannot adapt to viral, bacterial and fungal evolution, as accompanied by genetic reconfiguration in sexual reproduction. As such, NS persons will avoid contact with others, for fear that they will be exposed to an illness that their bodies cannot fight off. Third, people with indefinite life spans are less likely to want to engage romantically with people who will grow old and die. Finally, for various motivational and biological reasons, Agar suspects that NS persons will be unwilling, and possibly incapable, of having children. These aren’t the only costs of RLE, but they are the four that seem to form Agar’s argument for NS persons being posthuman.

To see why Agar thinks these problems divorce NS persons from humanity, consider a further aspect of his species-theory, that “reproductive isolation can be a partly psychological matter”. He notes that while humans and Neanderthals might have had significant chromosomal differences that made them unable to reproduce, there were probably also substantial psychological barriers that made them mutually unattractive. Agar suggests that we can distinguish between psychological aversions that are cultural, such as racism, and a “hardwired” aversion to “things that appear human but aren’t really”, an indicator of a suboptimal or even useless reproductive partner.

Agar defines reproductive compatibility in slightly broader than biological terms, as being partly “about having offspring that can be acknowledged as children and successfully raised to adulthood”. If the four effects he describes are accurate, it does seem unlikely that a NS person would reproduce with someone who hadn’t undergone RLE. Agar seems to think that this makes NS persons part of a different species.

There are problems with this claim. Psychological barriers can contribute to biological species-difference, by creating divides that lead to reproductive bifurcation of a species, or can simply warn us against attempting to reproduce with sub-par partners, as in the human-Neanderthal divide. Yet it seems implausible that we could separate groups into distinct species based solely on psychological barriers, so long as there remains a capacity to reproduce. As Agar acknowledges, various cultural barriers to reproduction – such as racism – do not lead us to identify multiple species. NS persons’ hermetic tendencies, and their preference for people of their ‘own kind’, do not seem sufficient to establish a species distinction, even if that means there are two groups who do not reproductively interact with one another.

This issue becomes clearer if we consider Agar’s explanation of those who are currently reproductively isolated. One example he offers is those who exist in self-imposed isolation, such as members of monasteries. These individuals qualify as human because of “potential or counterfactual reproductive connections with other humans”. When explaining this monastery example, Agar focuses on what individuals could do. However, when looking at the NS, he focuses on what will happen. Making the account consistent, in either direction, undermines his argument that RLE will lead to posthumanity.
Consider first what Agar would have to say if he considered actual behaviour in both instances. Assume he is right that NS persons would have psychological reasons to avoid reproduction, and even contact, with those of a normal lifespan. It is equally true that a committed monk, or lifelong prisoner, will not have any reproductive activity with the majority of humans.

The more plausible option, which Agar takes, is to acknowledge that the monk is still capable of reproduction, were his circumstances to change. The monk’s circumstances may include his desires and preferences – he may consider it morally wrong for him to reproduce, and this would need to change in order to end his reproductive isolation. Yet the very same consideration applies to the NS person. As Agar defines her, she is very risk-averse, has no interest in reproducing at all, let alone with someone whom she will outlive by centuries. But she still seems capable of reproduction, in the broader social sense that Agar uses. She could decide that the emotional and mortal risks are worth it. Even if we accept Agar’s assertion that she almost certainly won’t, we need some reason to focus in this case on what the NS person will do, when we see that the most reasonable option in the monk case is to look at counterfactuals of what he could do.

Agar has a final argument up his sleeve. He claims that RLE “is more likely…to result in beings who represent some kind of new beginning” because NS persons’ “evolutionary futures are less likely to depend on any contributions that they might make or might have already made to the human species”. Perhaps Agar would note that the monk will die without passing on any genetic material, and so no ongoing group barrier is established. Conversely, NS persons continue over time; if their preferences remain stable, psychological reproductive barriers will divide humanity into two well-defined groups. At this point, Agar might suggest, we have separate species.

We can imagine reproductively isolated groups that are importantly different from the ones Agar considers. Consider a religious order much like Agar’s monastery, aside from a couple of details. The order is not gender-exclusive, and members are not celibate, but may only reproduce with one another. We thus have two groups: the order and the rest of humanity. The evolutionary prospects of members of the order do not depend at all on sexual reproduction with outsiders, and vice versa.

I think it is clear that members of the order are still humans. Yet their reproductive isolation differs in no significant way from that of NS persons. It is self-imposed, based on certain uncommon preferences, involves social isolation, and is potentially reversible. Absent a stronger argument to the contrary, I conclude that a negligibly senescent person, even if they were isolated in all the ways Agar predicts, would remain human. This conclusion does not deny the serious costs of Agar’s suggestions, but it does mean that even if NS persons enjoy very different pleasures from those we enjoy today, those would still be human pleasures. So Agar cannot apply his species-relativist argument to this form of enhancement.

References

N. Agar (2010) Humanity’s End. MIT.

N. Agar (2010) ‘Thoughts about our species’ future’ in Journal of Evolution and Technology 21(2).