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The Journal of Value Inquiry

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10-03-2016

Biomedical Enhancement and the Kantian Duty to Cultivate Our Talents

Published in: The Journal of Value Inquiry | Issue 1/2017

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How should a contemporary Kantian think about the prospect of biomedical enhancement? Most of the traditional arguments in favor of enhancement are consequentialist in nature. Conventional wisdom might have it that Kant’s moral theory points in a direction wary of biomedical enhancement. A number of the classic arguments against enhancement seem to have loosely Kantian origins. People worry that it will infringe on our autonomy, that it would amount to using ourselves as mere means, that it violates human dignity, or that it does not respect our natures or identities.¹ In this paper I will offer a different interpretation of what a Kantian should be committed to with respect to enhancement. I will do so by way of focusing on Kant’s sometimes overlooked imperfect duty of self-perfection. Once we suitably spell out that duty’s shape and justification, we will see that Kantians have a unique position to offer in debates about biomedical enhancement that has potential to regard it largely favorably. …

previous article Anscombe on the Sources of Normativity

next article Schramme, Thomas, ed. Being amoral (Cambridge (MA): MIT Press, 2014). (Hardcover, $45.00 Short, £31.95, ISBN: 9780262027915, 344 pp. Ebook, $32.00 Short, ISBN: 9780262320375, 344 pp.)

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See Thomas Douglas, “Moral Enhancement”, Journal of Applied Philosophy 25.3 (2008), pp. 228–245 for a concise treatment of some of these arguments (e.g., Sandel, Annas, Mehlman). To be fair, there are also a number of consequentialist arguments against enhancement associated with the risks and dangers or harming others, leading to discrimination by a genetic aristocracy, etc.

I am importantly restricting myself here to what we can say about adults choosing enhancements for themselves. This won’t necessarily translate to the permissibility of parents authorizing enhancements for their children or pre-birth gene selection (as we do not, and cannot for Kant, have a duty to cultivate another’s talents).

See David DeGrazia, “Enhancement Technologies and Human Identity”, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 30 (2005), pp. 261–283 and Michael Bess, "Enhanced Humans Versus ‘Normal People’: Elusive Definitions.” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 0 (2010), pp. 1–15. More exactly, these medical interventions “do not respond to genuine medical need, where [medical need] is defined either (1) in terms of disease, impairment, illness, or the like, or (2) as departures from normal (perhaps species-typical) functioning.” Obviously there is a nest of issues lurking in defining impairment, normalcy, and illness, that will complicate how we distinguish genuine restoration from enhancement, and I cannot deal with those here, but I want the general picture, even if we need to refine or clarify in a range of intermediate (non-paradigm) cases.

See, for instance, Blair Tindall, “Better Playing Through Chemistry,” The New York Times, October 17, 2004, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/arts/music/17tind.html.

David DeGrazia, Creation Ethics: Reproduction, Genetics, and Quality of Life, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

See Gary Lynch, “Memory enhancement: the search for mechanism-based drugs,” Nature Neuroscience 5 (2002), 1035–1038, Roderick Scott, et al., “CREB and the discovery of cognitive enhancers,” Journal of Molecular Neuroscience 19 (2002), pp. 171–177, and Tim Tully et al., “Targeting the CREB pathway for memory enhancers,” Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 2 (2003), pp. 267–277.

Studies have found that Modafinil significantly enhanced performance on tests of digit span, visual pattern recognition memory, spatial planning, and stop-signal reaction time; as well as speedier results in matching, decision-making, and spatial planning tasks. See Turner, et al., “Cognitive enhancing effects of modafinil in healthy volunteers,” Psychopharmacology 165 (2003), pp. 260–269 and Repantis, et al., “Modafinil and methylphenidate for neuroenhancement in healthy individuals: A systematic review,” Pharmacol Res. 62.3 (2010), pp. 187–206.

See Yesavage, et al., “Donezepil and flight simulator performance: effects on retention of complex skills,” Neurology 59 (2001), pp. 123–125 and John Caldwell, et al., “A double-blind, placebo-controlled investigation of the efficacy of modafinil for sustaining the alertness and performance of aviators: a helicopter simulator study,” Psychopharmacology 150 (2000), pp. 272–282.

A standard argument in favor of the in principle permissibility of biomedical enhancement is to argue that there is no ontological nor morally relevant distinction between the more sci-fi biomedical enhancements at the forefront of science that spark controversy and basic things like diet, exercise, corrective glasses, education, therapy, or the internet as far as mediating self-improvement, which we all accept as permissible. See, e.g., Julian Savulescu and Anders Sandberg, “Neuroenhancement of Love and Marriage: The Chemicals between Us,” Neuroethics 1 (2008), pp. 31–44. I am quite sympathetic with that line of argument for the in principle permissibility (although, of course there are issues of safety and social justice), but the argument here is of a quite different form.

See Douglas, “Moral Enhancement”, Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu, “Unfit for the Future? Human Nature, Scientific Progress and the Need for Moral Enhancement,” in J. Savulescu, R. Ter Meulen, and G. Kahane (eds.), Enhancing Human Capacities (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) and Julian Savulescu and Ingmar Persson, “The Perils of Cognitive Enhancement and the Urgent Imperative to Enhance the Moral Character of Humanity,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 25.3 (2008), pp. 162–167.

There are certainly debates to be had about which enhancements would actually enhance us morally and it is likely that various normative assumptions might be implicit in various proposals. But I do not need to settle those questions for my purposes.

Robert Johnson, Self-Improvement: An Essay in Kantian Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). See esp. pp. 7–12 where Johnson positions the Kantian view against consequentialist and Aristotelian attempts to understand the intuitions around self-improvement.

Thomas Hill, “Imperfect Duties to Oneself”, in Andreas Trampota, Oliver Sensen, and Jens Timmermann, eds., Kant’s Tugendlehre (Boston: De Gruyter, 2013), p. 299.

Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals (MM), ed., M. Gregor, trans., M. Gregor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). MM 6:444.

Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (GW), ed., M. Gregor, trans., M. Gregor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). GW 4:423.

MM 6:445.

GW 4:423.

MM 6:392.

See especially MM 6:385-93; MM 6:444-7; GW 4:422-3; GW 4:430.

Johnson, Self-Improvement, pp. 91-114. Allen Wood, Kant's Ethical Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), esp. p. 149.

For a helpful taxonomy that tracks the following, see Allen Wood’s, “Duties to Oneself, Duties of Respect to Others,” in Thomas Hill, ed., The Blackwell Guide to Kant's Ethics (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). See also Hill “Imperfect Duties”, p. 294.

The language of “action plan” is Robert Johnson’s, Self-Improvement, 45.

Wood, “Duties to Oneself”, p. 229. MM 6:399–404.

MM 6:395, see also Hill, “Imperfect Duties”, p. 296.

MM 6:445.

MM 6:385-93. See also Thomas Hill, “Meeting Needs and Doing Favors,” in T. Hill, Human Welfare and Moral Worth (Oxford: Clarendon, 2002), 201–243, (esp. pp. 203–205), Karen Stohr, “Kantian Beneficence and the Problem of Obligatory Aid,” Journal of Moral Philosophy 8 (2011), pp. 45–67 (esp. p. 50) and Wood, Kant's Ethical Thought, p. 44.

Wood, “Duties to Oneself”, p. 243.

MM 6:444.

Lara Denis, “Kant’s Ethics and Duties to Oneself,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 78.4 (1997): 321–348.

Marcus Singer “On Duties to Oneself,” Ethics, 69 (1959): 202–205.

Kurt Baier, The Moral Point of View: A Rational Basis of Ethics (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1958), pp. 215, 231. He says that “a world of Robinson Crusoes has no need for a morality and no use for one,” p. 215.

Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 51, 181–82 and Denis, “Kant’s Ethics”, p. 323.

Denis, “Kant’s Ethics”, Wood, “Duties to Oneself”, Johnson, Self-Improvement.

Johnson, Self-Improvement, 71.

Christine Korsgaard, Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 295.

Johnson, Self-Perfection, 14.

Denis, “Kant’s Ethics”, p. 332. Of course we could abandon the Kantian framework altogether, but given my project here to see what voice the committed Kantian can lend to debates about enhancement, that is another discussion altogether.

Johnson, Self-Improvement, pp. 86–123. He summarizes the essence of such a position by saying that “a person has a duty to themselves just in case some principle is or can be validated through the joint legislation of rational agents in which they are in both the subject and object positions,” pp. 76–77.

Kant didn’t think every action was a matter of duty, nothing morally indifferent, or that virtuous agents should be constantly preoccupied with their moral purity and perfection. He called that position, derisively, “fantastic virtue” and saw it as a pernicious error. MM 6:409 and Denis, “Kant’s Ethics”, pp. 335–343.

Thanks to Anne Jeffrey for help crafting this point.

Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for help on this point.

MM 6:444 and GW 4:423.

GW 4:423.

Johnson, Self-Improvement, p. 25. Part of Johnson’s argument is that Kant rejects that the duty is to nature or to God. Perhaps if the duty were owed to either, then we might have duties of gratitude to develop those gifts which were God-given or naturally-endowed. But because the duty is owed to ourselves, it has a different justification and no such claims of gratitude apply.

MM 6:445.

Johnson, Self-Improvement, p. 25. “One’s obligation is to develop one’s talents based minimally on rational reflection about both the sort of life one wants to lead and whether one’s own endowments will be [or could be with reasonable cultivation, we should add] up to the task” p. 26.

Ibid., p. 28.

Ibid., p. 28 and Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (A). V.L. Dowell (tr.) (Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978), A 7:324.

MM 6:445.

Johnson, Self-Improvement, pp. 32–33.

Ibid., 32.

Ibid., pp. 39–43.

Ibid., pp. 44–64 and Wood, Kant’s Ethical Thought, pp. 90–91.

Denis, “Kant’s Ethics”, p. 324.

GW 4:423.

Hill, “Imperfect Duties”, p. 300.

MM 6:445.

GW 4:429.

MM 6:446, emphasis mine.

Hill, “Imperfect Duties”, p. 301.

MM 6:392.

Slightly adapted from Johnson to better capture the spirit of the duty than his presentation. Self-Improvement, 92.

Because Johnson interprets Kant in a ‘non-value-based’ way (a dispute with Wood I won’t settle), he cannot make use of a fundamental, grounding value like the value of humanity in premise one in the above argument, as Wood does (Johnson, Self-Improvement, pp. 98–110). Instead he thinks that “humanity is of value because the requirement to treat it thus and so is produced by a rational act of self-legislation.” (104) So it is valuable derivatively, and explained by a prior fact about the rational will.

This approach gives Johnson the following argument, which doesn’t ground an obligation on a fundamental value, but instead generates them from facts about practical reason itself. In its final refined form (113-4):

Practical reason operating through human abilities is necessarily to be a limit on, to be effected by, or to be realized by, every rational agent (because it is an end in itself, or an objective end).

Whatever is necessarily a limit on, effected by, or realized by, every rational agent we ought to treat consistently with its being necessarily a limit on, an effect of, or something realized by, every rational agent.

Not to realize human abilities is inconsistent with treating practical reason operating through human abilities as necessarily a limit on, an effect of, or something realized by, every rational agent.

We ought to realize human abilities.

I cannot improve another’s abilities (insofar as doing so counts as perfecting another as a person). (142-51)

I can improve my own abilities.

Therefore, if I am to realize human abilities (insofar as doing so counts as perfecting another as a person), I must do so myself.

Therefore I ought to realize my own human abilities.

The main controversial premise for my purposes is still 3) and the reasons for thinking it true should apply mutatis mutandis.

Ibid., 93.

MM 6:392.

Johnson, Self-Improvement, pp. 86–87.

Ibid., pp. 126–127.

John Rawls, A Theory of Justice. Revised Edition. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971, 1999).

Ibid., § 22.

Johnson, Self-Improvement, 129.

Ibid., pp. 131-2.

Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 62.

Johnson, Self-Improvement, 136.

Ibid., pp. 137-40.

In a manuscript currently in progress I explore arguments for the possibility that some particular forms of enhancement might actually be morally required for the Kantian, in the same way that some acts of beneficence are (e.g., saving a drowning child from a pond when one is able to with no cost to oneself).

MM 6:446-7 and MM 6:393. Hill, “Meeting Needs”, pp. 209–211 makes the case for the comparative strictness of the imperfect duty to moral perfection.

Johnson, Self-Improvement, pp. 39–43.

Given the central aim of my project, I won’t here discuss objections to the existence of the imperfect duty to cultivate one’s talents or the Kantian project more broadly.

MM 6:386-7.

Johnson, Self-Improvement, p. 157.

Ibid., 158.

Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for directing my focus to the discussion in this first objection.

MM 6:419.

See Ned Hettinger’s helpful handout on this issue, http://hettingern.people.cofc.edu/Environmental_Ethics/Hettinger_Seven_Ways_Not_To_Think_About_The_Natural.htm.

This might even include some developments that don’t pan out, if one could have reasonably expected it to in planning their projects, because being committed to the end doesn’t necessarily entail success in every endeavor that counts towards it (for instance, one might get blamelessly thwarted by external circumstances).

Title: Biomedical Enhancement and the Kantian Duty to Cultivate Our Talents
Publication date: 10-03-2016
Published in: The Journal of Value Inquiry / Issue 1/2017
Print ISSN: 0022-5363
Electronic ISSN: 1573-0492
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-016-9548-7

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Schramme, Thomas, ed. Being amoral (Cambridge (MA): MIT Press, 2014). (Hardcover, $45.00 Short, £31.95, ISBN: 9780262027915, 344 pp. Ebook, $32.00 Short, ISBN: 9780262320375, 344 pp.)

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