Enhancing the collectivist critique: accounts of the human enhancement debate

Individualist ethical analyses in the enhancement debate have thus far prioritised or only considered the interests and concerns of parents and the future child. The collectivist critique of the human enhancement debate argues that rather than pure individualism, a focus on collectivist, or group-le...

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Main Author: Johnson, T
Format: Journal article
Language:English
Published: Springer 2021
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author Johnson, T
author_facet Johnson, T
author_sort Johnson, T
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description Individualist ethical analyses in the enhancement debate have thus far prioritised or only considered the interests and concerns of parents and the future child. The collectivist critique of the human enhancement debate argues that rather than pure individualism, a focus on collectivist, or group-level ethical considerations is needed for balanced ethical analysis of specific enhancement interventions. Here I defend this argument for the insufficiency of pure individualism. However, existing collectivist arguments tend to take a negative approach in analysis that hinders them from adequately contributing to balanced ethical analysis, and often leading to a prohibitive stance. I argue this is due to two common problems with collectivist arguments: inappropriate acceptance of individualist assumptions, and failure to appropriately weigh individual vs collective ethical considerations. To further develop the collectivist critique in the enhancement debate, I suggest we may look to collectivism in public health ethics collectivism, which avoids these problems.
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spelling oxford-uuid:4ba88a80-cc6a-4a9c-b784-16acfe6770302022-03-26T15:44:52ZEnhancing the collectivist critique: accounts of the human enhancement debateJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:4ba88a80-cc6a-4a9c-b784-16acfe677030EnglishSymplectic ElementsSpringer2021Johnson, TIndividualist ethical analyses in the enhancement debate have thus far prioritised or only considered the interests and concerns of parents and the future child. The collectivist critique of the human enhancement debate argues that rather than pure individualism, a focus on collectivist, or group-level ethical considerations is needed for balanced ethical analysis of specific enhancement interventions. Here I defend this argument for the insufficiency of pure individualism. However, existing collectivist arguments tend to take a negative approach in analysis that hinders them from adequately contributing to balanced ethical analysis, and often leading to a prohibitive stance. I argue this is due to two common problems with collectivist arguments: inappropriate acceptance of individualist assumptions, and failure to appropriately weigh individual vs collective ethical considerations. To further develop the collectivist critique in the enhancement debate, I suggest we may look to collectivism in public health ethics collectivism, which avoids these problems.
spellingShingle Johnson, T
Enhancing the collectivist critique: accounts of the human enhancement debate
title Enhancing the collectivist critique: accounts of the human enhancement debate
title_full Enhancing the collectivist critique: accounts of the human enhancement debate
title_fullStr Enhancing the collectivist critique: accounts of the human enhancement debate
title_full_unstemmed Enhancing the collectivist critique: accounts of the human enhancement debate
title_short Enhancing the collectivist critique: accounts of the human enhancement debate
title_sort enhancing the collectivist critique accounts of the human enhancement debate
work_keys_str_mv AT johnsont enhancingthecollectivistcritiqueaccountsofthehumanenhancementdebate