Matteo Galletti

This paper explores the philosophical implications of psychedelic moral enhancement (PME) within the broader debate on moral bioenhancement (MBE). Drawing on the work of L.A. Paul and others, it frames PME as a transformative experience – an experience whose nature and impact cannot be fully anticipated before undergoing it, thus raising challenges for rational deliberation. Unlike low-order MBEs, which risk mechanizing moral behaviour, PME appears to engage higher-order reflective capacities, promoting a first-person moral standpoint without overriding agency. The paper argues that when voluntarily chosen and critically integrated, PME does not threaten moral agency but can instead facilitate profound moral growth. It concludes that PME may be ethically acceptable not despite its transformative power, but precisely because it helps individuals reorient their moral identity from within.

Is there any moral difference between internal moral enhancements, which directly affect the biological nature of human beings, and external moral enhancements, which nudge choices and behavior without changing human biology? If Neil Levy’s Ethical Parity Principle is applied, the answer should be no. Recently, John Danaher has argued that the Ethical Parity Principle is invalid and that there are ethical and political reasons for a prioritization of internal over external moral enhancements. Although Danaher’s argument presents some interesting insights, it needs to be corrected with finer-grained distinctions of the types of moral enhancements.

In this paper, I address the philosophical consistency of the term “three-parent babies,” which is often used to describe children born through mitochondrial replacement therapy. I will argue that two primary arguments, based respec-tively on identity and causality, fail to excludeegg donors as candidates as mor-al parents due to their essential contribution to the child’s existence (moral parenthood encompasses a set of rights and responsibilities that are not direct-ly regulated by a legal system). Finally, I shall show how the potential extension of parental status to donors is conceivable, relying on the concept of “investment” in the procreative dynamic, and a conventional and institutional conception of parenthood.

Monographic issue on the Philosophy of Emotions. Contents: Resentment, Empathy and Indignation; Jacqueline Taylor / Compassion without Cognitivism; Charlie Kurth / “I Don’t Want Your Compassion!”. The Importance of Empathy for Morality; Manuel Camassa / Making sense of emotional contagion; Carme Isern-Mas, Antoni Gomila / On Pride; Lorenzo Greco / Envy and its objects; Alessandra Fussi / Admiration, moral knowledge and transformative experiences; Maria Silvia Vaccarezza / Fear as Related to Courage: An Aristotelian-Thomistic Redefinition of Cognitive Emotions; Claudia Navarini, Ettore De Monte / On Courage. The Sense Of θυμός; Tiziana Migliore / Shades of Schadenfreude. A phenomenological account of pleasure at another’s misfortune; Danilo Manca / Concern and the Structure of Action; Alexander A. Jeuk / On Sexual Lust as an Emotion; Larry A. Herzberg / Emotions and Literature in Musil; Zeynep Talay Turner

COVID19 pandemic has clarified that public health policies are central for the future of human societies from several perspectives. As a matter of fact, they are based on certain premises that are practical-political (e.g., ensuring the health of citizens), moral (e.g., health is a value), or epistemological (e.g., certain ideas concerning expertise and shared knowledge). Indeed, effective policies require first and foremost not only to be based on reliable data and models (i.e., so-called evidence-based policy) but also to ensure that these policies are democratically accepted, shared (e.g., considering both cognitive and social dimensions), and hopefully formed after a deliberative process involving experts from various fields alongside citizens.

The idea of an unchanging human nature has always had a special place in Western philosophical thought. Far from being uncontested, this idea has received criticism from different traditions of thought, which have seen it even as an obstacle to the understanding of ourselves. Now it appears in the shape of a renewed naturalism and the opposing forces are the same as in the past. This volume shows some lines of the current debate about human nature: the revival of Herodotus and Protagoras's humanistic relativism and tolerance; Darwinian ethics; the critical relationship between neo-Aristotelian and neo-Kantian moral theories and the results of empirical science; the assumption about the existence of a “moral mind” based on an innate moral grammar; the multicultural political debate which considers the idea of human nature as a product and a tool of Western hegemony; and, finally, the reflection on sex and gender in the theory of difference and on the idea of "living" nature in the contemporary biopolitics

The aim of this paper is to compare two reports on human cloning, one by the US President’s Council on Bioethics and one by the Italian Comitato Nazionale per la Bioetica. I shall focus on those arguments against human cloning, in both reports, which are articulated in terms of (a) the development of human identity, (b) the meaning of human reproduction, and (c) the nature of family relationships. My general conclusion will be that the arguments against human cloning put forth by both reports are not sound, because they are grounded on the dubious assumption that there is a “natural way” of thinking about identity, reproduction, and family relationships.

In this book, the authors provide a detailed discussion of some problematic of some critical issues of the philosophical research field known as “moral psychology”. The common thread that ideally combines the eight essays concerns the definition and demarcation of the “moral mind”, as a set of cognitive and affective capabilities, attitudes, psychological mechanisms that have practical relevance when we wonder how to act or we evaluate the of action of others. The subtitle (persons, reasons, virtues) means to focus on the vertexes that draw an ideal triangulation within which lies the practical space characterizing and nourishing the moral life of human beings.

What are the conditions for holding each other responsible for the actions we take? What is moral blame and how does it function? Can we hold ourselves morally responsible for actions that depend on situational influences? Can growing up in unfortunate circumstances be a reason to suspend our blame attitudes? These are some of the questions that have characterized the contemporary debate on moral responsibility. Building on the reflections on responsibility proposed by Peter Strawson, the author reconstructs some attempts in contemporary English-language moral philosophy to answer them. At the centre of inquiry there are the socalled "practices of moral responsibility", which divide two shores: the description of moral agents as natural agents and the normative expectations that generate reciprocal claims about respectful behavior.

Human beings have always used different methods to become morally better, more just and more altruistic, as Socrates, Jesus and Gandhi taught: education, teaching, self-discipline, edifying reading, knowledge. They're sometimes effective and sometimes insufficient methods, especially in a global context where the human species itself is threatened to be wiped out by environmental disasters, pandemics, the use of weapons of mass destruction. According to some authors, this dreadful prospect can only be avoided by introducing more effective means of morally enhancing individuals. In the future, genetics, neuroscience and pharmacology could allow us to intervene on the biological nature of human beings, strengthening their moral dispositions to act with greater generosity, compassion, altruism, empathy. However, the moral bio-enhancement project raises many questions: the real and effective possibility of intervening on human traits or dispositions such as emotions, reason or the ability to see what is the right thing to do or the potential threat to the freedom of choice of individuals who would then be forced to behave in the "right" and "good" way. The book presents a cautious but not totally closed approach to moral bio-enhancement, in a phase studded with more doubts than certainties.