Vojin Rakic

Intensified and extensive data production and data storage are characteristics of contemporary western societies. Health data sharing is increasing with the growth of Information and Communication Technology platforms devoted to the collection of personal health and genomic data. However, the sensitive and personal nature of health data poses ethical challenges when data is disclosed and shared even if for scientific research purposes. With this in mind, the Science and Values Working Group of the COST Action CHIP ME ‘Citizen's Health through public-private Initiatives: Public health, Market and Ethical perspectives’ identified six core values they considered to be essential for the ethical sharing of health data using ICT platforms. We believe that using this ethical framework will promote respectful scientific practices in order to maintain individuals’ trust in research. We use these values to analyse five ICT platforms and explore how emerging data sharing platforms are reconfiguring the data sharing experience from a range of perspectives. We discuss which types of values, rights and responsibilities they entail and enshrine within their philosophy or outlook on what it means to share personal health information. Through this discussion we address issues of the design and the development process of personal health data and patient-oriented infrastructures, as well as new forms of technologically-mediated empowerment.

In Short: This book argues that a multidimensional ontology of time (MDT) entails a multidimensional ethical orientation (MDE) required for morally coherent agency under conditions of existential risk, irreversible technological power, and intergenerational responsibility across branching possible futures. Abstract: Ethical theory has largely proceeded under an implicit assumption that time is linear, unidirectional, and ethically neutral. Yet under contemporary conditions - existential risk, irreversible technological interventions, and long-range collective action - this assumption becomes increasingly inadequate. This book develops a unified framework linking metaphysics of time with normative ethics by introducing Multidimensional Time (MDT) as an ontology of temporal plurality and deriving from it Multidimensional Ethics (MDE), a higher-order ethical orientation for future-shaping agency. MDE does not replace standard moral theories; instead, it constrains and reorganizes deontological, consequentialist, and virtue-based reasoning when moral responsibility extends across branching and non-actualized futures. The resulting synthesis clarifies obligation and responsibility in cases of intergenerational justice, climate governance, moral enhancement, and AI-related existential risk, arguing that ethics must expand beyond linear temporal assumptions to remain philosophically and practically adequate.

Ethical theory has largely proceeded under an implicit assumption that time is linear, unidirectional, and ethically neutral. Yet under contemporary conditions - existential risk, irreversible technological interventions, and long-range collective action - this assumption becomes increasingly inadequate. This book develops a unified framework linking metaphysics of time with normative ethics by introducing Multidimensional Time (MDT) as an ontology of temporal plurality and deriving from it Multidimensional Ethics (MDE), a higher-order ethical orientation for future-shaping agency. MDE does not replace standard moral theories; instead, it constrains and reorganizes deontological, consequentialist, and virtue-based reasoning when moral responsibility extends across branching and non-actualized futures. The resulting synthesis clarifies obligation and responsibility in cases of intergenerational justice, climate governance, moral enhancement, and AI-related existential risk, arguing that ethics must expand beyond linear temporal assumptions to remain philosophically and practically adequate.

Various authors, including myself, have argued that happiness and morality operate in a circularly supportive relationship. In this paper, love will be added to this relationship. The new triple correlation will be explored through the following lens: not only do love and happiness reinforce moral action, but they appear to be in a triple circularly supportive relationship. Moral behavior is frequently grounded in love; love encourages prosocial behavior; prosocial behavior increases happiness; happiness, in turn, enhances the inclination of most people to act morally most of the time. Argued from the opposite direction: happiness tends to encourage prosocial behavior in most people most of the time; prosocial behavior is conducive to the development of loving relationships; love induces us to behave morally toward the people we love. The argument presented here will also propose that this triple circular reinforcement can be significantly deepened and sustained through a careful use of love‐enhancing substances, aided by guided meditation—particularly in the case of the psychedelic psilocybin. It will be concluded that humans will be motivated to use love drugs because they tend to increase their happiness. Consequently, a voluntary use of love drugs is a more effective means of moral (bio‐)enhancement than is the prevention of “ultimate harm” that is based on compulsory moral enhancement.

The effective collection and management of personal data of rapidly migrating populations is important for ensuring adequate healthcare and monitoring of a displaced peoples’ health status. With developments in ICT data sharing capabilities, electronic personal health records (ePHRs) are increasingly replacing less transportable paper records. ePHRs offer further advantages of improving accuracy and completeness of information and seem tailored for rapidly displaced and mobile populations. Various emerging initiatives in Europe are seeking to develop migrant‐centric ePHR responses. This paper highlights their importance and benefits, but also identifies a number of significant ethical, legal and social issues (ELSI) and challenges to their design and implementation, regarding (1) the kind of information that should be stored, (2) who should have access to information, and (3) potential misuse of information. These challenges need to be urgently addressed to make possible the beneficial use of ePHRs for vulnerable migrants in Europe.

Why to be good? Answers to this question vary. Religious people will be inclined to invoke Divine commands, deontologists the duty to act in a way that can be universalized as a moral rule, utilitarians the maximization of happiness as the aspired outcome, other consequentialists different outcomes, virtue ethicists the improvement of moral character, contractarians obligations derived from a contract. But what is the origin and reach of morality? Is it possible that morality is innate and universal?

If performance enhancement is indeed not morally controversial in principle, why have there been so many warnings in our cultural heritage about the dangers of human enhancement? Have they been merely conservative prejudices or is there more to them? I think that there is more to them. Serious warnings dealt with the issue of whether humans are capable of judging their capacities and whether they are morally apt to enhance these capacities. We have mentioned the tragic fates of characters such as Icarus and Faustus. But their cases do not discard performance enhancement in principle. They merely address wrong ways of enhancing humans.

The reasonable way for humans to proceed is therefore to embark on moral enhancement. If it has to be supported by biomedical means we call it moral bioenhancement (MBE). MBE might curb uncontrolled human enhancement that can even lead to the obliteration of humanity. This can be caused by AI, big data or something else that is morally dubious. MBE, on the other hand, if safe and effective, is by definition morally right and even if it would lead to the human species being gradually replaced by morally superior posthumans, it is not only morally right to facilitate that, but also a moral obligation.

The positions of some of the most essential MBE scholars will be discussed in more detail now. Their stances regarding MBE will be divided into four groups on the basis of the criteria support/opposition/categorical/hypothetical. First will be discussed those scholars who categorically support MBE: primarily, Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulesu. Second, those who support MBE in the context of certain assumptions: Thomas Douglas and David DeGrazia. Their MBE support is hypothetical. Third, those who hypothetically oppose MBE, that is, in the framework of certain assumptions they make about the usefulness of MBE: John Harris, Nicholas Agar and Robert Sparrow. Fourth, categorical opposition to MBE will be analyzed on the basis of the writings of Harris Wiseman.

It has been argued already that certain conceptions of the good are not geographically and/or historically determined. Some of these conceptions are the moral notions we have apparently been born with (see Chaps. 1 and 2 of Part 1). Those conceptions about which there is no consensus in (the vast majority of) humankind, are prone to being differently evaluated by deontologists, utilitarians, virtue ethicists; by all humans. A lot of evaluations about good and evil tend to focus on what is good. I will take a different route in this chapter, focusing to a large extent on evil.

In this chapter Wiseman’s position will be contextualized in light of MBE supporters and those MBE skeptics who have reservations regarding MBE, but who don’t go as far as Wiseman to reject MBE in principle. Wiseman’s The Myth of the Moral Brain contains a systematic overview of MBE and a development of various arguments against MBE I disagree with. By pointing to and expanding on the disagreements I have with Wiseman’s book and some other of his writings I hope to make the VMBE position additionally plausible.

A relatively succinct compilation will be offered now of technologies that can have an effect on MBE (Sect. 5.1). The discussion will also show why making the use of any MBE technologies compulsory is ineffective in principle (Sect. 5.2). Section 5.1 will have a neurological inkling, while Sect. 5.2 will have a philosophical foundation. Both sections will be in a single chapter, because the argument from Sect. 5.2 builds on Sect. 5.1: there are a number of techniques that can serve MBE, to various degrees of effectiveness (Sect. 5.1), while those that are ineffective in principle are MBE techniques that are being made compulsory (Sect. 5.2).

But in addition to moral behavior being conducive to happiness, happiness appears to stimulate moral behavior. Goodness and happiness operate in a circularly supportive fashion. Anik et al. (2009) discusses this relationship in the case of charitable giving. It concludes that giving (generosity) and being kind increases happiness, while happier people are kinder and more generous. Generosity and happiness operate in a positive feedback loop. There is reason to assume that other types of moral behavior (kindness, gratitude, making someone else happy) operate in a similar circularly supportive manner.

Why aren’t we better? Do we have a problem with understanding morality or don’t we want to be better? Before turning to the theme of enhancing morality, it is in order to point to a number of issues that are essential for a proper comprehension of morality. In this chapter, in the section that follows, the question will be raised what it is that makes humans less good than they can be and what they may do in order to become better than they are. It will be argued that love is a key component of goodness, as well as an act of our will. In the section after that, “goodness” will be specified and the concept of the “comprehension-motivation gap” will be introduced in some detail. Finally, the issues of freedom, morality and MBE will be addressed.

In this chapter I will give an interpretation of the role consequentialist ethics can have in disaster settings. I will argue that consequentialist ethics is most appropriate when decisions are taken that affect not single individuals but larger numbers of people. This is frequently the case in political decision making, especially when powerful states act in the domain of international relations, but also in disaster settings. I will focus on the latter settings and argue that in those contexts consequentialism is most adequate as a moral theory. I will also contend that different situational settings require different ethics. The moral relevance of these situational settings is primarily dependent on the number of people affected by morally relevant decisions. The formulation of my position will be preceded by a brief review of the historical development of consequentialism, primarily related to disaster settings. In order to make my arguments as vivid as possible I will use four vignettes. In two of them consequentialist ethics is appropriate, while in the other two deontology is a more reasonable moral theory. In the former two we deal with large numbers of people in disaster settings; in the latter two with “regular” settings that do not affect the lives of many individuals.

This paper explores whether extraterrestrial or other forms of cognition and morality that are unobservable and incomprehensible to humans constitute an existential risk (X-risk) or an existential opportunity (X-opportunity) for humanity. It is being argued that the human epistemological apparatus is fundamentally limited, rendering certain forms of life—both extraterrestrial and potentially terrestrial—imperceptible and incomprehensible (which is also a novel solution to the Fermi paradox that we propose). By integrating philosophical reasoning with empirical insights from (astro)biology, the paper examines the potential implications of interacting with such entities. It will be concluded that extra-terrestrial or other sentient forms of cognition and morality could represent both a risk and an opportunity, with the likelihood of a favorable outcome increasing in correlation with scientific progress and cognitive and moral enhancement of humanity.

This paper is structured in three sections. The first discusses the institutional framework pertaining to bioethics in Serbia. The functioning of this framework is critically assessed and a number of recommendations for its improvement presented. It is also emphasized that philosophers are underrepresented in public debate on bioethics in Serbia. Second, this underrepresentation will be related to two issues that figure prominently in Serbian society but are not accompanied by corresponding bioethical discourses: the first is abortion and the second is the largely unrestricted use of neuropharmacology since the 1990s, both for therapeutic and for cosmetic/recreational purposes. Finally, the perspective of bioethics in Serbia is addressed. It is asserted that this perspective can be based on the enhancement of public philosophical debate on bioethical issues, especially those with notable features in Serbian society . Such enhancement would also strengthen the corresponding institutional and legal frameworks

'Ultimate harm' can be defined as the result of a catastrophic event or series of events that permanently destroy sentient life on Earth or make its conditions so unbearable that it cannot be considered worthy of living anymore. In order for us to seriously reduce the likelihood of ultimate harm, eudaimonic agents have to become dominant in humanity. Their dominance will be established if humanity embarks on the path of moral enhancement, including moral bio-enhancement. It will be argued that moral and cognitive enhancement are to be combined in such a way that all cognitive enhancement has moral enhancement as its objective. It will also be demonstrated why the domination of the eudaimonic type can best be attained in a liberal singleton, and why such a singleton is an increasingly realistic perspective in the time to come. Ultimate harm, however, will also continue to be a likely scenario.

Eight moral virtues that have figured prominently in various cultures throughout history will be discussed: altruism, empathy, gratitude, humility, and the “cardinal virtues” of justice, prudence, fortitude, and temperance. The focus will be on how to understand them and what their relationship is to happiness. It will be argued that all eight essential moral virtues enhance happiness in most people most of the time. Their favourable impact on happiness may motivate humans to become better, which includes the decision to subject themselves voluntarily to moral bioenhancement (MBE)—in order to achieve this betterment. Nonetheless, the development of MBE technologies is still in its infancy and moral education remains the primary means for the moral enhancement of humans, as well as for the enhancement of their happiness. This may however change in the relatively near future.

This paper addresses the possible effects of psychedelic drugs, notably psilocybin, on moral bio-enhancement (MBE). It will be argued that non-psychedelic substances, such as oxytocin, serotonin/serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or vasopressin, have indirect effects on M(B)E, whereas psilocybin has direct effects. Additionally, morality and happiness have been shown to operate in a circularly supportive relationship. It will be argued that psilocybin also has more direct effects on the augmentation of human happiness than non-psychedelic substances. Hence, psilocybin multiplies its effects on morality and on moral enhancement (as well as on happiness) if compared with non-psychedelic substances. Still, caution is advised if psilocybin is being used, and the correct dosage should be prescribed by an appropriate physician. Furthermore, the use of psilocybin has additional effects on moral enhancement and happiness if combined with meditation, preferably under the guidance of an experienced meditation specialist.