Autonomy and the Ethics of Biological Behaviour Modification Julian Savulescu, Thomas Douglas, Ingmar Persson
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by PhilPapers Autonomy and the Ethics of Biological Behaviour Modification Julian Savulescu, Thomas Douglas, Ingmar Persson [This is a pre-publication version. The final version is available in A Akabayashi (ed) The Future of Bioethics: International Dialogues, Oxford University Press.] Much disease and disability is the result of lifestyle behaviours. For example, the contribution of imprudence in the form of smoking, poor diet, sedentary lifestyle, and drug and alcohol abuse to ill-health is now well established. More importantly, some of the greatest challenges facing humanity as a whole – climate change, terrorism, global poverty, depletion of resources, abuse of children, overpopulation – are the result of human behaviour. In this chapter, we will explore the possibility of using advances in the cognitive sciences to develop strategies to intentionally manipulate human motivation and behaviour. While our arguments apply also to improving prudential motivation and behaviour in relation to health, we will focus on the more controversial instance: the deliberate targeted use of biomedicine to improve moral motivation and behaviour. We do this because the challenge of improving human morality is arguably the most important issue facing humankind (Persson and Savulescu, forthcoming). We will ask whether using the knowledge from the biological and cognitive sciences to influence motivation and behaviour erodes autonomy and, if so, whether this makes it wrong.1 1. COGNITIVE SCIENCE AND BEHAVIOUR MODIFICATION One of the emerging subdisciplines of the cognitive sciences is the cognitive science of motivation and behaviour. Advanced techniques in neuroscience, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, together with sophisticated pharmacological, psychological and economic experiments have begun to shed light on the subtle neural and psychological bases of motivation and behaviour.
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