Pharmacological Moral Enhancement

Joao Fabiano asks us to imagine that in the future humanity makes a major breakthrough, see Practical Ethics. He imagines that society develops a pill which rids our morality of all its faults. Without any side-effects, it vastly increases our ability to cooperate and to think rationally on moral issues, while also enhancing our empathy and our compassion for the whole of humanity. Such a pill would morally enhance us. Fabiano argues the use of such a pill would present us with grave dangers. In this posting I will consider Fabiano’s worries about pharmacological moral enhancement but with some slight modifications my comments might be applied to germline editing using CRISPR.

The pill Fabiano asks us to imagine has two functions. Firstly it enhances our cognitive abilities. Secondly it enhances our capacity for empathy. For the sake of argument I consider two pills, firstly one which enhances our cognitive abilities and secondly one which enhances our capacity for empathy. This separation means it would be possible to gain one of these kinds of enhancement even if the other posed dangers. I will consider the implications of using of each of these pills in turn.

Prima facie it might be assumed that increasing our powers of reason would increase our capacity for morality. If reason allows us to see others as much the same as ourselves then the domain of morality expands. It might be argued this has happened over time. In ancient civilisations such as that of the Greeks moral concern for the most part focussed on citizens of that state. Over time this focus broadened to include women, slaves and even animals. This seems to be the position adopted by Steven Pinker (1). However this ability to see others as much the same as ourselves does not automatically expand the domain of morality. Persson and Savulescu point out that reason and self-interest could tell you to rob and kill an injured stranger in the wilderness rather than help him or to abstain from returning a favour to someone you will not ever see again rather than return it at some cost to yourself (2). Moreover it might seem that a cognitively enhanced sociopath could do much more harm than one who had been un-enhanced. It might be suggested that if a tyrant such as Hitler or Mao had been cognitively enhanced that he could have inflicted even greater suffering. In the light of the above it might be thought I am not in favour of cognitive enhancement for moral reasons.

In fact if a pill became available, which simply cognitively enhanced us without any adverse side effects, I would be in favour of us taking such a pill for moral reasons. Firstly reason as pointed out by Hume reason alone does not give us any reason to act. If reason alone gives us no reason to act then cognitive enhancement will not alter someone’s ends. At this point an objector might point out even if cognitive enhancement does not alter someone’s ends it might enable an evil person achieve his evil ends more effectively. I accept my objectors point but would also point out cognitive enhancement should equally make it easier for a good person to achieve his good ends. In addition I would suggest that because there are more good people rather than evil people we should favour cognitive enhancement. However my objector might now suggest that certain people, such as Hitler or Mao, could cause even greater suffering if they were cognitively enhanced and that this suffering outweighs the more modest good most cognitively enhanced people would be capable of. She might then argue that because of this increased suffering which might be caused by a small minority of cognitively enhanced people we should not favour cognitive enhancement. In response I would doubt whether people such as Hitler or Mao could cause greater suffering provided they were cognitively enhanced. Moral monsters cannot cause great suffering alone. Let us accept my suggestion that most people are good, even if only to some modest degree. It follows if most people were cognitively enhanced that they would be less likely to aid moral monsters such as Hitler or Mao further their ends. It further follows we should favour cognitive enhancement. My second reason for favouring cognitive enhancement is that it is inevitable. Even if it is impossible to cognitively enhance us by pharmacological means we will nonetheless be enhanced by education. We will experience an ever expanding knowledge basis even if the speed at which we process this basis remains constant. It follows if pharmacological means of cognitive enhancement are adopted we are merely speeding up an inevitable process.

Let us consider the implications of using the second pill solely to enhance our capacity for empathy. Fabiano worries whilst such an enhancement might lead to an increase in our individual tendency towards cooperation between individuals it might also lead to an increase in competition between groups, this worry is shared by Paul Bloom (3). He argues that what is important about enhancing morality is increasing cooperation between groups. I accept Fabiano’s argument and find his worry plausible. Evolution designed us to live in small groups and enhancing our empathy might only lead to more social cooperation with people we know. Enhancing our empathy might not lead us to have any more moral concern for those separated by distance and time. It might not lead those of us in the more affluent parts of the world to think more about those of the third world or future generations, see (4). Let us assume our increased capacity for empathy is only for people we know. This increase means we might see the wants and needs of people we know assuming greater importance to us. This increased importance might lead us to exploit those people we don’t know to benefit those we do. For instance enhancing our capacity for empathy for those we know, existing people, might lead us to disregard the needs of future generations to serve the needs of the present one. In the light of the above it appears Fabiano’s worries are justified and that we should not encourage empathic enhancement for moral reasons.

If we should not encourage empathic enhancement for moral reasons should we only encourage cognitive enhancement for these purposes? Someone might suggest we should enhance our toleration of others. Indeed I would suggest in more connected, multi-racial, multi faith world the capacity for toleration is among most important moral capacities we can possess. Unfortunately at the moment there appears to be no prospect of simply enhancing our toleration by pharmacological means. In the light of the above does this mean we should only attempt to enhance our morality cognitively unless some means is found to enhance our toleration? I will now argue it does not. However even if it is impossible to directly enhance our toleration I would suggest any other type of moral enhancement should be judged by its indirect effects on our toleration.

Let us return to considering enhancing empathy and Fabiano’s worry that enhancing our empathy might lead to more group competition. Basically it might lead to less toleration. I only share Fabiano’s worry provided we only enhance our empathy. However if we can enhance our empathy it seems probable we can also enhance our cognition. It follows that in much the same way doctors use a drug cocktail to treat some diseases such as cancer, we might use a pharmacological cocktail to address our moral shortcomings. It might appear that provided we use a pharmacological cocktail to enhance both our empathy and our cognition that Fabiano’s worry might be misplaced. Let us accept that enhancing our empathy should lead to more social cooperation with people we know. Now it seems to me whether Fabiano’s worry is justified or not depends on what is meant by ‘people we know’. It is certainly justified if we only mean family and friends. It’s also justified if ‘people we know’ means people who share our particular tastes, feelings and prejudices. However ‘people we know’ could just mean the broader recognition of these people simply as people. That is they are capable of love, being hurt and are the sort of creatures that can decide their own future. It might appear that enhancing our cognition might change what we mean by ‘people we know’ from friends and family or people who share our tastes to people in the broader sense outlined above. However the above appearance might be false. It is possible even if we enhance both cognition and empathy that our enhanced empathy simply overwhelms our ability to act rationally. Whether enhanced empathy might overwhelm someone’s cognitive abilities is an empirical question and it should possible to design an experiment to answer this question. Provided it can be shown that enhanced empathy doesn’t overwhelm someone’s cognitive abilities and we adopt dual enhancement we have reason to believe Fabiano’s worry is unwarranted.

In conclusion I want to consider the enhancement of our empathy in more detail. In order to do so we must be clear about what is meant by empathy. Being able to feel empathy roughly means one has the capacity to understand and share the feelings of another. I have suggested above that the ability to feel empathy must initially have a broad basis. We must see others as being capable of love, being hurt and being the sort of creatures who can decide their own future. It follows if I care about someone in a purely empathic way I must care about what she cares about, rather than what I think might be in her best interests. Understanding other people is not always easy. Sometimes we mistake the feelings of another and substitute, what we believe they feel or even what we think they should feel, for their true feelings. We may do this because we are lazy. We simply don’t ask people how they feel. Or we may do this because we simply assume others feel the same way do. We suffer from epistemic arrogance. This substitution means we move from empathic concern to sympathy. It also means we leave the initial broad basis for empathy behind, see caring and empathy. If a pharmacological means became available which enhanced our understanding of others without leaving this initial broad basis I see no reason why such a means should not be adopted. Provided we retain this basis of empathic concern then I see no reason why enhancing our empathy should lead to more group conflict as envisioned by Fabiano.

1. Steven Pinker, 2011, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Allen Lane, page 656.
2. Ingar Persson & Julian Savulescu, UNFIT FOR THE FUTURE, Oxford University Press, page 107.
3. Paul Bloom, 2016, Against Empathy, Ecco
4. Michael Slote, 2007, The Ethics of Care and Empathy, Routledge, page 2