MORAL BIOENHANCEMENT AND AUTONOMY: THE RISK OF A VISUALIZED GOOD
DOI: 10.23951/2312-7899-2019-4-254-267
The aim of this article is to map the issue of moral bioenhancement in two ways: (1) to show the basic premises and connotations of the conflict between traditional and biotechnology-oriented processes (using the problem of reducing subjective autonomy as an example); (2) to demonstrate how metaphorical visualization of the good allows one to transfer the conflict of interpretations of the good and autonomy into the space of the ontological conflict of autonomy and the good. Personal autonomy is one of the dominant ideas of modern biomedicine. Technoscience as the most significant trend in building relations between a scientist, a doctor and society is based on the idea of an active subject interested in shaping their own lifestyle and turns to the subject’s autonomy as a source of the legitimacy of the good. Meanwhile, personal autonomy is also a source of risks associated with actions, the consequences of which can be extremely destructive and completely unpredictable. The precautionary principle, whose functionality is determined by distinguishing between critical and non-critical risks, demonstrates its inefficiency in the context of an engineering and technological society. The development of neurotechnologies and brain research, as well as the active development of genetics, gives reason to believe that many behavioural strategies that can be regarded as ethically correct or ethically deviant are biologically determined. The problem of moral biologization arises on a ready-made substrate, as a process of involving neurotechnologies into solving social problems. Modern biotechnology thus somewhat goes beyond the boundaries of traditional moral and ethical discourses on autonomy and the good. With new explanations of such processes as the tendency and the possibility of moral behaviour, the predisposition to one or another type of activity, predicting a possible tendency to certain diseases in advance with high certainty, biotechnologies force us to look at a person from a certain angle: to look for the biological causes of social and moral behaviour. Despite the fact that a biotechnological commentary is considered only as an auxiliary tool for ethical norms, which explains how autonomous choice is influenced by certain biological factors, the biologization of social space is a real philosophical challenge, the essence of which is to rethink what moral choice is, how it arises and what modern autonomy and the good that flows from it are. Moral bioenhancement is a constructivist approach to morality whose task is to biotechnologically transform autonomy for the good. In this regard, it ignores the already existing discourses of autonomy and the good and, on the other hand, needs to use a metaphor for self-identification and identification of contradictions with the existing discourses of autonomy and the good. The article concludes that moral bioenhancement problematizes autonomy and, in fact, can be regarded as a form of biotechnological paternalism.
Keywords: autonomy, benefit, visualization, metaphor, human occupation by technologies, moral bioenhancement, technoscience
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Issue: 4, 2019
Series of issue: Issue 4
Rubric: TRANSLATION AS RESEARCH
Pages: 254 — 267
Downloads: 732