Article Text
Abstract
If we assume that “enhancement” names all efforts to boost human mental and physical capacities beyond the normal upper range found in our species, then enhancement covers such a broad range of interventions that it becomes implausible to think that there is any generic ethical case to be made either for or against it. Michael Sandel has recently made such a generic case, which focuses on the importance of respecting the “giftedness” of human nature. Sandel succeeds in diagnosing an important worry we may have about the use of some enhancements by some parents, but his arguments are better understood as opposing “procrustean parenting” rather than enhancement in general.
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NATURE OF ENHANCEMENT
“Human enhancement” is a blanket term that typically refers to a variety of efforts—some still best treated by science fiction, some well established in today’s societies—that are intended to boost our mental and physical capacities, and the capacities of our children, beyond the normal upper range found in our species. Because human enhancement apparently involves altering human nature, it is meant to be the sort of thing that sends shivers down the spine. For “transhumanists”, these are frissons of excitement at the thought of a wonderful new world of genetically and pharmaceutically augmented, ultra-intelligent, long-lived super-persons.1 For conservatives such as Leon Kass, our shivers are the wise verdict of an instinctive moral repugnance.2 One of the oddities of this debate is that we have been enhancing human nature for donkeys’ years without shivering much at all. Compare, for example, the physical and mental make-up of people in Britain today with the physical and mental make-up of people who lived in Britain 400 years ago. We are taller, we live longer, we have more inclusive ethical codes. These are changes we have wrought on ourselves, and our moral dispositions, our longevity and our stature are surely elements of human nature. Charles Darwin thought that what he called “the noblest part of our nature”—namely, our sense of sympathy for others—was a product of natural selection.3 But Darwin also thought that this part of our nature had been modified for the better by the deliberate action of humans.4 Darwin believed that, as our knowledge of the effects of our actions became more detailed, and as we became able to formulate and disseminate public rules of conduct, the scope of sympathy had been altered to encompass not only members of our immediate communities, but members of other nations and species. Any evolutionary view that stresses the importance to our species of cultural inheritance will not regard anthropogenic alterations to human nature—including intentional alterations to human nature—as new.5 6
THE GHOST OF EUGENICS
Before proceeding, we should set one issue aside. Some people might think that, even if enhancement can take many forms, there is something especially disturbing about genetic enhancement, for it represents a return to the wrongs of eugenics. But one cannot use parallels with eugenics to justify placing unique moral opprobrium on genetic enhancement.7 If one looks at this issue from a historical perspective, one realises that many eugenicists were concerned with the ways in which a strong genetic inheritance might be squandered in virtue of inadequate educational and nutritional regimes.8–10 Their worries about the health of future generations consequently focused on a variety of interventions—not only genetic ones—that we would now group under the broad banner of public health. From a conceptual standpoint, if one opposes eugenics on the grounds that it embodied state-sponsored efforts to control what sorts of people should exist, then one should also oppose various modern public health interventions on the same grounds. After all, many governments encourage women who are contemplating conception to take folic acid supplements, thereby reducing the chances of babies being born with spina bifida.11 One should equally oppose strictly controlled national educational curricula on the grounds that they also embody an overly restrictive state-endorsed template for what future people should be like. Let me be clear that this argument is not intended to establish that all of these state-sponsored interventions are legitimate. Rather, it establishes that there is no special link between genetic enhancements and eugenics.
VARIETIES OF ENHANCEMENT
The ubiquity of enhancement might make us wonder whether there is anything much of a general nature that can be said either for or against it. Human nature is best understood to name all the typical features of human populations. Many of its features can be altered in many ways—as many ways as there are of altering developmental processes. “Enhancement” encompasses experimental infant nutritional regimes, genetic manipulations of the embryo, body building, novel educational practices, the administration of mind-altering drugs, and so forth. In each case we can examine the goals of these interventions, the mechanisms by which they are achieved and the likely unintended consequences, and ask whether the ends are worthy, the means appropriate and the side effects objectionable. Is it not likely that we will come up with different evaluations in different cases? In line with this, John Harris has made the important point that if we assume that human nature names typical features of human populations, we should conclude that augmenting such capacities as disease resistance or resistance to tooth decay beyond the norm counts as augmentations of human nature and are consequently enhancements, in spite of the fact that they are also usually understood to lie within the realm of therapy.7 The ubiquity of enhancement constitutes a prima facie case against the idea that “altering human nature” constitutes any kind of genuine ethical firebreak. And this, in turn, reinforces the thought that there can be no good generic case against enhancement.
SANDEL ON ENHANCEMENT
Let us recap. There are prima facie reasons to be sceptical of generic cases against enhancement. This does not mean, of course, that we have constructed a case in favour of enhancement—if enhancement is as diverse as I have suggested, we should anticipate that evaluation will need to proceed on a case-by-case basis. But we have not considered all of the detailed cases made against enhancement—perhaps there are legitimate generic worries we should have about enhancement which the breezy arguments of the preceding sections obscure. In the remainder of this paper I consider a recent sophisticated and influential case of this sort put forward by Michael Sandel.12 Sandel also appeals, I will argue, to suspect notions of human nature in laying out his case. He thinks that a diagnosis of what is wrong with enhancement requires us to reconnect with an ethical tradition with which we have lost touch. Specifically, it involves what he calls “the proper stance of human beings toward the given world”.12
Sandel’s case rests heavily on this notion of “the given world” and, more specifically, on his claim that we should preserve the “giftedness” of human nature. His devotion to giftedness is inspired in part by theological ethics, but Sandel is careful to note that, as he understands the notion, we need not view life as a gift from God or from any person. Life is not a gift in the sense of a present that someone has gone to some trouble to bestow on us. Rather, for Sandel, life is a gift in the philosopher’s sense of “the given”. Life is something that a person finds himself with.
Sandel thinks that in seeing life as a gift, we see it as something we ought not alter, even if we can. Why not? If life was literally a gift from God, then one can understand that there might be good reasons for refusing to fiddle with its makeup. It smacks of ungratefulness. What’s more, if God knows best, then tampering with his gift will be counterproductive. But if life is a gift only in the sense that it is something we find ourselves to possess, what is wrong with seeking to alter it, especially if we can alter it for the better? Specifically, why shouldn’t parents try to alter the lives of their children for the better? Here is Sandel’s answer:
To appreciate children as gifts is to accept them as they come, not as objects of our design, or products of our will, or instruments of our ambition. Parental love is not contingent on the talents and attributes the child happens to have … [W]e do not choose our children. Their qualities are unpredictable, and even the most conscientious parents cannot be held wholly responsible for the kind of child they have. That is why parenthood, more than other human relationships, teaches what the theologian William F May calls an “openness to the unbidden”.12
Sandel adds that “May’s resonant phrase describes a quality of character and heart that restrains the impulse to mastery and control and prompts a sense of life as gift”.12 The “impulse to mastery” certainly sounds like a bad thing, but it is not clear what is wrong with it. If we are to love our children, it is important that we are disposed to love them however they turn out. Otherwise the chances are we will not love them at all. “Openness to the unbidden” in this sense is, indeed, a good attitude for parents to have. There is, however, no contradiction in parents being disposed to love their children however they might turn out, while also seeking to influence their children’s lives so that they go as well as possible. If “openness to the unbidden” is to be read as a refusal to intervene in what nature bestows on a child—if this is what a restraint of the impulse to mastery amounts to—then it is no longer clear that it is such an admirable trait. After all, as Harris has pointed out, it would appear to entail a refusal to allow medical intervention to cure congenital diseases.7
Sandel anticipates this problem and clarifies his position further:
To appreciate children as gifts or blessings is not to be passive in the face of an illness or disease. Healing a sick or injured child does not override her natural capacities but permits them to flourish. Although medical treatment intervenes in nature, it does so for the sake of health, and so does not represent a boundless bid for mastery and dominion. Even strenuous attempts to treat or cure disease do not constitute a Promethean assault on the given. The reason is that medicine is governed, or at least guided, by the norm of restoring and preserving the natural human functions that constitute health.12
Sandel relies here on a slippery distinction between interventions that “override” natural capacities and those that permit natural capacities to “flourish”. Consider someone born with the disease phenylketonuria (PKU). The detrimental effects of PKU genes on cognitive development can be greatly eased if the growing child is given a special diet, low in the commonly-occurring amino acid phenylalanine, from birth onwards (although Diane Paul has offered some important correctives regarding the ways in which the PKU case has been used by philosophers).13 Should we say that we have overridden the child’s natural capacities by giving her a special diet? Presumably this is instead meant to count as allowing her natural capacities to flourish. But then it becomes hard to see what one might understand by a person’s “natural capacities”, beyond those capacities that the person could attain, given the right interventions. Clearly this won’t serve to act as a bulwark against enhancement. One might say that genetic alteration is not itself a “natural” process, hence one cannot describe genetic modification as allowing a person’s natural capacities to flourish. But it is equally implausible to think that a specially-designed diet, low in phenylalanine, is “natural”. If “the given” encompasses all of a person’s “natural capacities”, then we do not assault the given either by giving a child a special diet or by giving a child special genes.
REVISITING THE UNBIDDEN
We can understand Sandel’s position better—and thereby appreciate what is right about his opposition to enhancement—by returning to his basic ethical case for an “openness to the unbidden”:
In caring for the health of their children, parents do not cast themselves as designers or convert their children into products of their will or instruments of their ambition … Like all distinctions, the line between therapy and enhancement blurs at the edges … But this does not obscure the reason the distinction matters: parents bent on enhancing their children are more likely to overreach, to express and entrench attitudes at odds with the norm of unconditional love.12
On the face of things, this doesn’t offer much help. It is a defect of character to be disposed to love one’s child only if the child turns out a certain way. But a parent who thinks “I will only love my child if she has well above average intelligence” has the same sort of character fault as a parent who thinks “I will only love my child if she has no disabilities or diseases”. The disposition to love conditionally is not the same either as the desire to master nature or the dismissal of the unbidden. Sandel endorses the efforts of parents who devote considerable time, money and emotion to seeking cures for their children’s diseases. He is not particularly concerned that the actions of such parents are likely to render love conditional on a child being healthy. Why does he think that parents who instead devote time, money and emotion to enhancing their children’s abilities beyond the demands of health will undermine the norm of unconditional love?
We can understand Sandel’s reasoning by reflecting on the sorts of case studies he considers. Take the examples of a parent who devotes herself to making her son into a world-leading tennis player and a parent who devotes herself to alleviating the effects of her daughter’s cystic fibrosis. One of the most obvious moral differences between the cases originates with the concern that the boy may not care much for tennis. The time and effort he is forced to put into it may deprive him of other activities he would have enjoyed far more, and his relationship with his family may suffer as a result. In brief, the parent may act against the best interests of the child. It is harder—but not impossible—to sketch circumstances under which a parent who acts to relieve a serious disease acts against the interests of her child. Enhancement, more than the curing of disease, tempts parents to shoehorn their children into ill-fitting lives. Enhancement is linked to a genuinely troubling form of “mastery”, not mastery over nature but mastery over the child’s emerging character. One can also see why Sandel thinks that this form of “mastery” is opposed to a valuable form of “openness to the unbidden”. The good parent will act in concert with the unfolding interests of the growing child, whatever those idiosyncratic interests may turn out to be. The parent who tries to “master” the child, on the other hand, will seek to promote tennis playing, regardless of what the child turns out to be like. A link now emerges between “mastery” and conditional love. Consider a parent whose efforts to transform her child into a great tennis player are not tempered by the child’s actual inclinations and interests. Such a parent is likely to truly love a child only if the child becomes a great tennis player.
PROCRUSTEAN PARENTING
There is something right about Sandel’s argument. He succeeds in putting his finger on genuine ethical concerns we may have with the efforts of some parents to use some enhancements. But the suggested links between enhancement, conditional love and insensitivity to the interests of the child are too variable to support a generic case against all forms of enhancement. Not every parent who seeks intensive tennis coaching for her child is insensitive to the child’s interests. The child may be an enthusiastic participant in the project, he may thank his parent sincerely for the success he enjoys, it may be that his life would not have gone appreciably better had the parent left the child to his own devices. Parents who are attuned to their child’s idiosyncrasies could make good use of bespoke enhancements. Moreover, some enhancements seem to have just the same multipurpose value as the alleviation of serious disease. Long attention span, for example, seems like the kind of trait that is likely to aid a child to achieve her goals and ambitions, whatever those goals might be. (Of course we can imagine very peculiar life goals, the attainment of which would be impeded by long attention span. But we can also imagine very peculiar life goals, the attainment of which would be impeded by being free of serious diseases.) Finally, we can imagine circumstances in which parents put their children through exceptionally demanding therapeutic regimes when, in fact, these children—and the society that surrounds them—would be better off finding a way to live with the disease or disability. Efforts to enhance need not go against the interests of the child; efforts to heal need not coincide with the interests of the child. Sandel’s case undermines procrustean parenting, but this is not to say that it rules out all and only cases of enhancement.
Towards the end of his book, Sandel remarks that “… changing our nature to fit the world, rather than the other way around, is actually the deepest form of disempowerment. It distracts us from reflecting critically on the world, and deadens the impulse to social and political improvement”.12 It is not at all clear what Sandel means by this, partly because it is unclear how we should draw the distinction between the world and our nature. Suppose we begin by noting a feature of the world: children have a variety of different interests, skills and talents. We also note a feature of our nature: parents are sometimes insufficiently sensitive to their children’s idiosyncratic interests. If Sandel’s general concerns about the likely effects of enhancement are justified, it can only be because the large majority of parents have this trait. Suppose we all reflect critically on this state of affairs and the result of that reflection is that we aim to alter this part of our nature. Surely there is nothing wrong with seeking to do this. And if we succeed, a contingent barrier to enhancement is lifted.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to an audience in Luleå, Sweden for comments on a previous version of this paper.
Footnotes
Funding: The Isaac Newton Trust and the Leverhulme Trust.
Competing interests: None.
Provenance and Peer review: Not commissioned, externally peer reviewed.
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