Enhancement and posthuman dignity: is the modification of human cognitive and biological capacities morally permissible, and is dignity preserved across substantive enhancement?

Nick Bostrom, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

The bioconservative position rests on a status-quo bias that the Reversal Test, developed with Toby Ord (2006), makes visible: if it would be wrong to enhance cognition by genetic intervention, would it also be wrong to prevent a comparable cognitive decline?123 If the asymmetric judgment cannot be defended, the original objection turns on the change-from-current-state rather than on the resulting state — and that is a methodological mistake.

Posthuman dignity is not a contradiction in terms: dignity does not depend on Homo-sapiens-typical capacities being preserved exactly as they are now. The Letter from Utopia (2008) and Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005) present the case in different registers — the first as a future-letter pleading with the present not to delay; the second as parable on the human acceptance of aging as a tyranny we have rationalized.45

Sources

  1. All rights reserved. 0014-1704/2006/11604- 0003$10.00 The Reversal Test: Eliminating Status Quo Bias in Applied Ethics Nick Bostrom and Toby Ord I. INTRODUCTION Suppose that we develop a medically safe and affordable means of enhancing human intelligence.
    The Reversal Test - Eliminating Status Quo Bias in Applied Ethics, pp. 1–2
  2. Alternatively, one could speculate that the direct enhancement of cognitive ability would set a different kind of precedent than either the "therapeutic enhancement" to compensate for a natural brain-damaging factor or the subsequent increase in cognitive this comparison. To consider the consequentialist grounds for enhancement means, of course, that one way or another we must make such a comparison.
    The Reversal Test - Eliminating Status Quo Bias in Applied Ethics, p. 20
  3. Positions on the ethics of human enhancement technologies can be (crudely) characterized as ranging from transhumanism to bioconservatism.
    In Defense of Posthuman Dignity, p. 1
  4. Kean Birch, "Beneficence, Determinism and Justice: An Engagement with the that many of the risks have been overstated. To proponents of this view, opinions like those expressed in the above quotation tend to seem puzzling: why think that greater mental faculties would be of no value if everybody shared in the improvement?
    The Reversal Test - Eliminating Status Quo Bias in Applied Ethics, pp. 8–9
  5. Nobody would argue for a ban on Mozart-in-the-womb on grounds that we cannot rule out that some psychological woe might befall the child once she discovers that her facility with the violin had been prenatally " programmed" by her parents. Yet when it comes to e.g.
    In Defense of Posthuman Dignity, p. 10

Where the argument is made

  • "In Defense of Posthuman Dignity" (Bioethics, 2005)
  • "Why I Want to Be a Posthuman When I Grow Up" (Springer, 2008)
  • "Dignity and Enhancement" (President's Council on Bioethics, 2008)
  • "Human Genetic Enhancements: A Transhumanist Perspective" (Journal of Value Inquiry, 2003)
  • "Human Enhancement" introduction with Julian Savulescu (Oxford UP, 2009)
  • "Ethical Issues in Human Enhancement" with Rebecca Roache (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
  • "The Reversal Test: Eliminating Status Quo Bias in Applied Ethics" with Toby Ord (Ethics, 2006)
  • "Embryo Selection for Cognitive Enhancement" with Carl Shulman (Global Policy, 2014)
  • "Smart Policy: Cognitive Enhancement and the Public Interest" with Roache (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011)
  • "The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant" (Journal of Medical Ethics, 2005)
  • "Letter from Utopia" (Studies in Ethics, Law, and Technology, 2008)
  • "Transhumanist Values" (Review of Contemporary Philosophy, 2005)
  • "A History of Transhumanist Thought" (Journal of Evolution and Technology, 2005)

How the argument was received

The transhumanist program is contested philosophical territory. The bioconservative case is taken seriously and engaged in print. Embryo Selection for Cognitive Enhancement (with Shulman, 2014) is the more recent technical extension to the polygenic-screening era. Deep Utopia (2024) re-engages the enhancement program in light of the post-AGI condition. The position is cautious-permissive: enhancement permissible in principle, with the moral considerations the bioconservatives raise treated as real considerations.