Autonomy and Love Enhancement

In a paper Earp, Sandberg and Savulescu suggest individual couples should be free to use pharmacological interventions, provided these interventions allow us to keep our values and our environment intact, to sustain and improve their romantic connection. They then proceed to suggest some parents might have an obligation to do so in order to enhance their relationships for the sake of their children. They further suggest that this might be done by the use of “love drugs” such as oxytocin. Their arguments run as follows. First they argue,

1)      Parents have an obligation to protect their children from harm, all else being equal.

2)      Marriage breakdown, and especially outright divorce, is harmful to children.

3)      Therefore parents have an obligation (all else being equal) to preserve and enhance their relationships—for the sake of their offspring.

They then proceed to argue,

1)      Parents have an obligation (all else being equal) to preserve and enhance their relationships for the sake of their offspring.

2)      In many cases, the only way to do this is through pharmacological intervention, in conjunction with other more conventional strategies like couple’s therapy.

In assessing this argument it is crucial to understand what is meant by all else being equal. I will assume that all else being equal means any pharmacological intervention must have no damaging physiological or psychological side effects. However it also seems the authors believe all else being equal also means our keeping values and our environment intact. In what follows I will firstly argue such a belief is mistaken. I will then consider the implications of this mistake for the argument as a whole.

Firstly it is clear any love drug must of necessity change the environment we live in if it is to be effective. Such drugs will not of course change our physical environment but they will change our psychological environment. If parents live in a psychological environment characterised by lots of minor discords, waning love and a general unhappiness then love drugs should change this environment. Indeed the whole point of parents taking love drugs is to change their psychological environment in order to stop them divorcing. However people take anti-depressants all the time in order to change their psychological environment with no ill effects. This suggests to me the fact that someone who takes love drugs will have her environment changed is not a reason to reject Earp, Sandberg and Savulescu’s argument.

Does the taking of love drugs change someone’s values? Change in the context of values could have two meanings. Firstly change might means someone acquires new values or loses some of her existing ones. Secondly change could mean she alters the priorities she gives to her existing values. Let us assume someone’s values are linked to what she cares about. Let us further assume her identity as a particular person depends on what she cares about, upon her values. It follows if she acquires new values or loses some of her existing values she alters her identity to some degree. However I would argue someone’s identity is tied not only to those values she possesses but also to the priorities she gives to these values. For instance someone might value both being a mother and being good teacher. However someone who values being a mother first and a teacher second has a different identity to someone who reverses these priorities. It follows if someone changes the priorities she gives to her values she also changes her identity. The taking of love drugs does not appear to change someone’s values using my first meaning. However the purpose someone has in taking of love drugs would be to change the priorities she assigns to her various values in order to benefit her children. It follows the taking of love drugs changes someone’s values using the second meaning of change outlined above. It further follows the taking of love drugs changes someone’s identity.

If we accept that someone taking love drugs will have her identity altered does this give us a reason to reject Earp, Sandberg and Savulescu’s argument? It might be concluded the taking of these drugs would make someone inauthentic and this fact alone gives us reason to reject the authors’ argument. However such a conclusion seems premature. Just becoming a parent might also change someone’s identity and alter her values. Indeed it might not only alter the priorities someone assigns to her values but generate new values. The fact someone’s identity sometimes changes over time is natural and should usually give us no cause for concern. Someone might accept that natural changes in our identity do not give us cause for concern but object that the taking of love drugs is unnatural. In response I would suggest simply talking about something being natural or artificial is not really helpful; it doesn’t really do any work. My objector might respond by arguing what really matters is the way the change is caused. I accept her point. I further accept if love drugs alone cause a change in someone’s identity that their use is unacceptable and that we should reject Earp, Sandberg and Savulescu’s argument because of the damage these drugs do to her autonomy.

However I am reluctant to accept love drugs alone cause a change in someone’s identity. After all someone doesn’t just take a drug randomly with no purpose in mind. She takes a drug for a purpose and it follows she uses the drug instrumentally. In what follows I will argue firstly that love drugs might enable a parent to make a better decision and secondly these drugs might enable a parent carry out a previously made autonomous decision. Prima facie it might appear there is no reason as to why the taking of a love drug might enable us to better decision. However the truth of this appearance depends on how a specific drug works. Some drugs enhance our cognition. It seems plausible that a cognition enhancing drug might permit parents to see beyond their short term marital problems and see that remaining married will give them greater satisfaction in the long term as well as benefiting their children. Indeed studies have shown oxytocin, a potential love drug, is involved in nursing behaviour, trust, and mind-reading (1). If oxytocin enhances mind reading it enhances cognition and might enable parents to make better marital decisions resulting in fewer divorces and less harm to their children. Moreover the taking of such a love drug might be seen as enhancing rather than damaging someone’s autonomy.

I now want to consider the situation when love drugs might be seen as enabling someone to enact her previously made autonomous decision. Let us return to my example of someone who is both a mother and teacher. Let us assume she desperately wants to be a good mother but finds it hard to bond with her child and gives far greater priority to her teaching. Let us also assume after some reflection she makes an autonomous decision to shed some of her teaching load in order to become a better mother. Let us still further assume she still finds it difficult to implement this decision and bond with her child. After some further reflection she makes an autonomous decision to take oxytocin to enable to enact her previously made autonomous decision. Prima facie it appears the taking of a love drug has once again enhanced rather than damaged someone’s autonomy and we have no reason to reject Earp, Sandberg and Savulescu’s argument. However I have some reservations about accepting this appearance.

My first reservation is connected to what sort of autonomy we want to respect. Let us accept the mother’s decision to take oxytocin is an autonomous one. However it is perfectly possible for someone to make an autonomous decision which has the result of damaging her capacity for autonomy. One can decide to take heroin or perhaps more realistically a terminally ill patient might decide to commit suicide. Is it possible that a love drug such as oxytocin might also damage someone’s capacity for autonomy? Perhaps such a drug might bind someone so close to her partner that this affects some of the other things she cares about and perhaps even her cognitive judgements. Of course if we give priority to respecting someone’s autonomous decision over preserving her capacity for autonomy this reservation becomes groundless. Personally I favour respecting autonomous decisions over respecting someone’s capacity for autonomy. For instance if we respect a terminally ill cancer patient’s capacity for autonomy rather than her autonomous decision to die then she might be left with her capacity for autonomy but use it only to make decisions to die which she is prevented from implementing.

My second reservation concerns whether a mother’s decision to love her child more is always truly autonomous. Let us accept she had all the relevant facts and was un-coerced. Moreover she was under no pressure from her partner, friends or grandparents. It might be thought by many the mother’s decision was clearly autonomous. However the fact that she needed to take oxytocin to implement her decision suggests this might not be so. I would agree with Frankfurt that for her to make an autonomous decision means she has to come to care about certain things and she must come to care about some of them more than others rather than simply reflect upon her decision (2). Frankfurt uses the example of a mother who after some reflection decides it would be in the best interests of her child if he was adopted. However when the moment for adoption comes she cannot go through with her decision. Her purely reflective decision was one she was unable to implement because she discovered what she truly cared about (3). Helm also holds that we sometimes discover our values rather than reach them purely through reflection (4). I would question whether, if the mother in the above example took love inhibiting drugs to enable her to let her child be adopted, we would say these love inhibitors enhanced her autonomy. Indeed it might be argued these inhibitors damaged her autonomy. The above example of course does not show love drugs might damage someone’s autonomy but it does support my reservations and emphasises the need for caution.

1. Domes, G., Heinrichs, M., Michel, A., Berger, C. & Herpertz, S. C. (2007) Oxytocin improves “mind-reading” in humans. Biological Psychiatry 61, 731–733.
2. Frankfurt H, 1988, The Importance of What We Care About. Cambridge University Press, page 91.

3.      Frankfurt H, 1999, Necessity, Volition, and Love. Cambridge University Press, page 111.

4.      Bennett Helm, 2010, Love, Friendship & the Self, Oxford University Press, page 131.

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