Virtue Ethics and Human Enhancement

This book shows how pressing issues in bioethics e.g. the ownership of biological material and human cognitive enhancement successfully can be discussed with in a virtue ethics framework. This is not intended as a complete or exegetic account of virtue ethics. Rather, the aim here is to discuss how some key ideas in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, when interpreted pragmatically, can be a productive way to approach some hot issues in bioethics. In spite of being a very promising theoretical perspective virtue ethics has so far been underdeveloped both in bioethics and neuroethics and most discussions have been conducted in consequentialist and/or deontological terms.

Covers the novel topic of human cognitive enhancement Discusses how some key ideas in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, when interpreted pragmatically, can be a productive way to approach some hot issues in bioethics Contributes to the current debate both by giving a short introduction to virtue ethics and by adding some interesting and novel perspectives on bioethics Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Inhalt

Introduction.- chapter 1 The problem.- chapter 2 The good life.- chapter 3 The biological obstacles.- chapter 4; Aristotle's virtues and how to acquire them.- chapter 5 Examples of useful capacities.- chapter 6 Critique of virtue ethics.- chapter 7 Three enhancement methods.- chapter 8 Conclusion.