Sever Kıyak, Bilge
M.A., Department of Philosophy
Supervisor: Assist. Prof. Dr. István Aranyosi
May 2019
INTRODUCTION
The suggestions about enhancing people’s moral or cognitive traits have been
continued to their existence for many decades. Discussions on cognitive
enhancement bring about the questions about moral enhancement whether it is
possible or ethically permissible. There are many other questions about moral
enhancement. In this debate there are also many concerns because without a
consensus on what is morally good, how can we suggest that we can make one
person morally better person? However, some authors think that without a moral
enhancement it is impossible for human race to survive for another century or half century since with cognitive enhancement and development of knowledge more and
more people can have access to knowledge of how to develop weapons of mass
destruction and because of human made global warming and climate change (see
Persson & Savulescu: 2008). By applying moral enhancement, we can have a chance
to make people act morally or at least have moral capacities. The first group, on the
other hand, claims that starting a debate about which traits are morally good or bad is
nothing but opening the Pandora’s Box (Raus, Focquaert, Schermer, Specker &
Sterckx, 2014: 263).
In spite of the fact that moral enhancement could be exercised both by traditional
means and by biomedical means, in this paper I will mainly focus on biomedical
moral enhancement. There are many different methods for biomedical moral enhancement, to name some; surgical, pharmacological, genetic, nanotechnological
are some of them. To be more specific, I will focus on oxytocin hormone’s use in
biomedical moral enhancement. The reasons why I choose oxytocin are, first, that
many papers and studies can be found in the literature and second, that it is easy for a
human to take it in the body by exogenous means (for instance, by a nasal spray),
and thus it is easy to use in studies (De Dreu et.al., 2010: 1408). Third, there is
evolutionary importance of this hormone (see Churchland, 2011) for sympathy and
survival.
I wish to defend that biomedical moral enhancement is not necessary; the key reason
of the global problems, which the defenders of biomedical moral enhancement
mention, is the lack of adequate knowledge and awareness in the society. In this
paper, I will begin with the possible and extant descriptions of moral enhancement.
There will be some questions such as “what kind of an intervention is possible or
should be aimed at?” The second part of the paper will be on oxytocin hormone,
what its known functions are and how it could be used in moral enhancement, what
might be the possible side-effects of using oxytocin in moral enhancement
experiments. In the third part of the paper, the most commonly discussed questions
about moral bioenhancement will be put forward. In the literature there are many
supports and worries about moral enhancement by biomedical means. I will try to
touch all of these questions and arguments in this part. Finally, in the fourth chapter I
will illustrate my thesis by answering the questions in the third chapter.
Watchmen On The Pod 