title: Egalitarianism and moral bioenhancement.
abstract: A number of philosophers working in applied ethics and bioethics are now earnestly debating the ethics of what they term "moral bioenhancement." I argue that the society-wide program of biological manipulations required to achieve the purported goals of moral bioenhancement would necessarily implicate the state in a controversial moral perfectionism. Moreover, the prospect of being able to reliably identify some people as, by biological constitution, significantly and consistently more moral than others would seem to pose a profound challenge to egalitarian social and political ideals. Even if moral bioenhancement should ultimately prove to be impossible, there is a chance that a bogus science of bioenhancement would lead to arbitrary inequalities in access to political power or facilitate the unjust rule of authoritarians; in the meantime, the debate about the ethics of moral bioenhancement risks reinvigorating dangerous ideas about the extent of natural inequality in the possession of the moral faculties.
authors.affiliation: a Monash University.
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sparrow
mesh_terms: D024803:Biomedical Enhancement / Q000941:ethics*; D026689:Ethical Analysis; D028663:Ethical Theory; D006801:Humans; D009014:Morals; D011057:Politics; D012945:Social Values
keywords: egalitarianism; enhancement; ethics; moral bioenhancement; moral enhancement