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26Commentary: Moral Bioenhancement Worthy of the NameCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 26 (3): 411-414. 2017.In “Would we even know moral bioenhancement if we saw it?”, Harris Wiseman highlights a number of distinctions, between cognitive and emotional enhancement, voluntary and compulsory enhancement, and between enhancement and therapy, which he holds, not unreasonably, to be relevant to the debate about moral bioenhancement. He also offers a new distinction, between “hard” and soft moral bioenhancement, to which he believes critics of moral bioenhancement should be paying more attention. Having made…Read more
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60Better Living Through Chemistry? A Reply to Savulescu and Persson on ‘Moral Enhancement’Journal of Applied Philosophy 31 (1): 23-32. 2013.In ‘Moral Enhancement, Freedom, and the God Machine’, Savulescu and Persson argue that recent scientific findings suggest that there is a realistic prospect of achieving ‘moral enhancement’ and respond to Harris's criticism that this would threaten individual freedom and autonomy. I argue that although some pharmaceutical and neuro‐scientific interventions may influence behaviour and emotions in ways that we may be inclined to evaluate positively, describing this as ‘moral enhancement’ presuppos…Read more
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184The real force of 'procreative beneficence'In Akira Akabayashi (ed.), The Future of Bioethics: International Dialogues, Oxford University Press. pp. 183-192. 2014.
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206(Im)Moral technology? Thought experiments and the future of `mind control'In Akira Akabayashi (ed.), The Future of Bioethics: International Dialogues, Oxford University Press. pp. 113-119. 2014.In their paper, “Autonomy and the ethics of biological behaviour modification”, Savulescu, Douglas, and Persson discuss the ethics of a technology for improving moral motivation and behaviour that does not yet exist and will most likely never exist. At the heart of their argument sits the imagined case of a “moral technology” that magically prevents people from developing intentions to commit seriously immoral actions. It is not too much of a stretch, then, to characterise their paper as a thoug…Read more
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45A Child's Right to a Decent Future?: Regulating Human Genetic Enhancement in Multicultural SocietiesAsian Bioethics Review 4 (4): 355-373. 2012.Should significant enhancement of human capacities using genetic technologies become possible, each generation will have an unprecedented power over the next. I argue that it is implausible to leave decisions about the genetic traits of children entirely up to individuals and that communities will sometimes be justified in intervening to protect the interests of children against their parents. While a number of influential authors have suggested that the primary interest that the community shoul…Read more
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23The perils of post-personsJournal of Medical Ethics 39 (2): 80-81. 2013.The willingness of some scientists, futurists … and now philosophers to contemplate—or even actively pursue—their own obsolescence is a source of genuine wonder. Writers such as Hans Moravec,1 Ray Kurzweil2 and Nick Bostrom3 blithely maintain that we will soon be outclassed by our own cybernetic creations as though this were a prospect that could only be celebrated and not feared. In this context, one can only applaud Agar's clearheaded investigation4 of the prospects for creating ‘post-persons’…Read more
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2Procreative Beneficence, Obligation, and EugenicsGenomics, Society, and Policy 3 (3): 43-59. 2007.
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163Robots in aged care: a dystopian futureAI and Society 31 (4): 1-10. 2016.In this paper I describe a future in which persons in advanced old age are cared for entirely by robots and suggest that this would be a dystopia, which we would be well advised to avoid if we can. Paying attention to the objective elements of welfare rather than to people’s happiness reveals the central importance of respect and recognition, which robots cannot provide, to the practice of aged care. A realistic appreciation of the current economics of the aged care sector suggests that the intr…Read more
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122Imposing Genetic DiversityAmerican Journal of Bioethics 15 (6): 2-10. 2015.The idea that a world in which everyone was born “perfect” would be a world in which something valuable was missing often comes up in debates about the ethics of technologies of prenatal testing and preimplantation genetic diagnosis . This thought plays an important role in the “disability critique” of prenatal testing. However, the idea that human genetic variation is an important good with significant benefits for society at large is also embraced by a wide range of figures writing in the bioe…Read more
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49Enhancement and Obsolescence: Avoiding an "Enhanced Rat Race"Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 25 (3): 231-260. 2015.A claim about continuing technological progress plays an essential, if unacknowledged, role in the philosophical literature on “human enhancement.” I argue that—should it eventuate—continuous improvement in enhancement technologies may prove more bane than benefit. A rapid increase in the power of available enhancements would mean that each cohort of enhanced individuals will find itself in danger of being outcompeted by the next in competition for important social goods—a situation I…Read more
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444War without virtue?In Bradley Jay Strawser (ed.), Killing by Remote Control: The Ethics of an Unmanned Military, Oup Usa. pp. 84-105. 2013.A number of recent and influential accounts of military ethics have argued that there exists a distinctive “role morality” for members of the armed services—a “warrior code.” A “good warrior” is a person who cultivates and exercises the “martial” or “warrior” virtues. By transforming combat into a “desk job” that can be conducted from the safety of the home territory of advanced industrial powers without need for physical strength or martial valour, long-range robotic weapons, such as the “Preda…Read more
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3406Talking Sense about Political CorrectnessJournal of Australian Studies 73 119-133. 2002.In this paper I make a number of points about “political correctness”. Although individually these arguments seem straightforward - and will hopefully be uncontroversial - put together in context they reveal the idea of a “politically correct”, left-wing dominated, media or intelligentsia in Western political culture to be a conservative bogeyman. The rhetoric of “political correctness” is in fact overwhelmingly a right-wing conservative one which itself is used mainly to silence dissenting po…Read more
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599Better than men?: Sex and the therapy/enhancement distinctionKennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 20 (2). 2010.The normative significance of the distinction between therapy and enhancement has come under sustained philosophical attack in recent discussions of the ethics of shaping future persons by means of preimplantation genetic diagnosis and other advanced genetic technologies. In this paper, I argue that giving up the idea that the answer to the question as to whether a condition is “normal” should play a crucial role in assessing the ethics of genetic interventions has unrecognized and strongly coun…Read more
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43Sexism and human enhancementJournal of Medical Ethics 39 (12): 732-735. 2013.In this paper, I respond to recent criticisms, by Paula Casal, of my arguments about the implications of John Harris and Julian Savulescu's influential arguments for human enhancement for sex selection. I argue that, despite her protestations, her paper relies upon the idea that parents have a moral obligation to have children that will serve the interests of the nation. Casal’s use of dubious claims about inherent psychological differences between men and women to make her hypothetical case fo…Read more
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162A Not‐So‐New EugenicsHastings Center Report 41 (1): 32-42. 2011.In Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People (2007), John Harris argues that a proper concern for the welfare of future human beings implies that we are morally obligated to pursue enhancements. Similarly, in “Procreative Beneficience: Why We Should Select The Best Children” (2001) and in a number of subsequent publications, Julian Savulescu has suggested that we are morally obligated to use genetic (and other) technologies to produce the best children possible. In this pape…Read more
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755Killer robotsJournal of Applied Philosophy 24 (1). 2007.The United States Army’s Future Combat Systems Project, which aims to manufacture a “robot army” to be ready for deployment by 2012, is only the latest and most dramatic example of military interest in the use of artificially intelligent systems in modern warfare. This paper considers the ethics of a decision to send artificially intelligent robots into war, by asking who we should hold responsible when an autonomous weapon system is involved in an atrocity of the sort that would normally be de…Read more
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867Implants and Ethnocide: learning from the Cochlear implant controversyDisability and Society 25 (4): 455-466. 2010.This paper uses the fictional case of the ‘Babel fish’ to explore and illustrate the issues involved in the controversy about the use of cochlear implants in prelinguistically deaf children. Analysis of this controversy suggests that the development of genetic tests for deafness poses a serious threat to the continued flourishing of Deaf culture. I argue that the relationships between Deaf and hearing cultures that are revealed and constructed in debates about genetic testing are themselves dese…Read more
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87History and collective responsibilityAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 78 (3). 2000.In this paper I will argue that contemporary non-Aboriginal Australians can collectively be held responsible for past injustices committed against the Aboriginal peoples of this land. An examination of the role played by history in determining the nature of the present reveals both the temporal extension of the Australian community that confronts the question of responsibility for historical injustice and the ways in which we continue to participate in those same injustices. Because existing inj…Read more
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118The Competition of Ideas: Market or Garden?Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 4 (2): 45-58. 2001.The ‘marketplace of ideas’ is an influential metaphor with widespread currency in debates about freedom of speech. We explore a number of ways competition between ideas might be described as occurring in a marketplace and find that none support the use of the metaphor. We suggest that an alternative metaphor, that of the ‘garden of ideas’, may offer more productive insights into issues surrounding the regulation of speech.
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224Terraforming, vandalism and virtue ethicsIn Jai Galliott (ed.), Commercial Space Exploration: Ethics, Policy and Governance, Ashgate. pp. 161-178. 2015.‘Terraforming’ is hypothetical climatic and geo-physical engineering of other planets on a grand scale, with the aim of turning the so-called ‘barren’ planets in our (or for that matter another) solar system into habitable earth-like eco-systems. Although terraforming sounds like an idea from science fiction (where it indeed has appeared), it has been seriously proposed as a future project for the human race. With such a technology we could colonise the solar system and perhaps eventually others…Read more
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315Drones, courage, and military cultureIn George R. Jr Lucas (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Military Ethics, Routledge. pp. 380-394. 2015.In so far as long-range tele-operated weapons, such as the United States’ Predator and Reaper drones, allow their operators to fight wars in what appears to be complete safety, thousands of kilometres removed from those whom they target and kill, it is unclear whether drone operators either require courage or have the opportunity to develop or exercise it. This chapter investigates the implications of the development of tele-operated warfare for the extent to which courage will remain central t…Read more
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15The Dead Donor Rule and Means-End Reasoning - A Reply to NapierCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 21 (1): 141-146. 2012.
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43Beyond Humanity? The Ethics of Biomedical Enhancement – By A. Buchanan (review)Journal of Applied Philosophy 29 (2): 160-162. 2012.
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66Queerin’ the PGD Clinic: Human Enhancement and the Future of Bodily DiversityJournal of Medical Humanities 34 (2): 177-196. 2013.Disability activists influenced by queer theory and advocates of “human enhancement” have each disputed the idea that what is “normal” is normatively significant, which currently plays a key role in the regulation of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). Previously, I have argued that the only way to avoid the implication that parents have strong reasons to select children of one sex (most plausibly, female) over the other is to affirm the moral significance of sexually dimorphic human biolo…Read more
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97Right of the Living Dead? Consent to Experimental Surgery in the Event of Cortical DeathJournal of Medical Ethics 32 (10): 601-605. 2006.Ravelingien et al have suggested that early human xenotransplantation trials should be carried out on patients who are in a permanent vegetative state (PVS) and who have previously granted their consent to the use of their bodies in such research in the event of their cortical death. Unfortunately, their philosophical defence of this suggestion is unsatisfactory in its current formulation, as it equivocates on the key question of the status of patients who are in a PVS. The solution proposed by …Read more
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167Is it “every man's right to have babies if he wants them”?: Male pregnancy and the limits of reproductive libertyKennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 18 (3). 2008.Since the 1980s, a number of medical researchers have suggested that in the future it might be possible for men to become pregnant. Given the role played by the right to reproductive liberty in other debates about reproductive technologies, it will be extremely difficult to deny that this right extends to include male pregnancy. However, this constitutes a reductio ad absurdum of the idea of reproductive liberty. One therefore would be well advised to look again at the extent of this purported r…Read more
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64Armed military robots: editorialEthics and Information Technology 15 (2): 73-76. 2013.Arming uninhabited vehicles is an increasing trend. Widespread deployment can bring dangers for arms-control agreements and international humanitarian law. Armed UVs can destabilise the situation between potential opponents. Smaller systems can be used for terrorism. Using a systematic definition existing international regulation of armed UVs in the fields of arms control, export control and transparency measures is reviewed; these partly include armed UVs, but leave large gaps. For preventive a…Read more
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36Ethics, eugenics, and politicsIn Akira Akabayashi (ed.), The Future of Bioethics: International Dialogues, Oxford University Press. pp. 139--53. 2014.This chapter will sketch a political critique of recent arguments for human enhancement. While on paper it may be possible to sketch out visions of a world in which the pursuit of genetic enhancement of human beings does not lead to a renewed interest in racial hygiene and widespread violations of human rights, the political assumptions one must make in order to hold that this is possible in the real world are – I will argue – excessively optimistic. In reality, the pursuit of human enhancement …Read more
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57Xenotransplantation, consent and international justiceDeveloping World Bioethics 9 (3): 119-127. 2009.The risk posed to the community by possible xenozoonosis after xenotransplantation suggests that some form of 'community consent' is required before whole organ animal-to-human xenotransplantation should take place. I argue that this requirement places greater obstacles in the path of ethical xenotransplantation than has previously been recognised. The relevant community is global and there are no existing institutions with democratic credentials sufficient to establish this consent. The distrib…Read more
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97The social impacts of nanotechnology: An ethical and political analysis (review)Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 6 (1): 13-23. 2009.This paper attempts some predictions about the social consequences of nanotechnology and the ethical issues they raise. I set out four features of nanotechnology that are likely to be important in determining its impact and argue that nanotechnology will have significant social impacts in—at least—the areas of health and medicine, the balance of power between citizens and governments, and the balance of power between citizens and corporations. More importantly, responding to the challenge of nan…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |