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The Ambivalence of Moral Psychology

The most important point to note about these two criticisms is that, for all that Jotterand couches them in terms of Aristotelian virtues and MacIntyrean social practices, neither depends on that machinery. The first objection, that transhumanists treat people as moral automatons, could be made by anyone who thinks we should reject interventions that affect our will, a position open to Kantians and even to Humeans. Nevertheless, this particular objection, I think, is misguided. To say that our moral emotions can be altered by technological means does not imply that we have no moral agency at all. If we can decide whether we want to use the drugs, then we still act as moral agents in that decision. We act as moral agents when we conclude that using neurotechnology is the best way to improve ourselves morally. In that respect, taking drugs is no different from deciding to go into psychotherapy or putting ourselves under the tutelage of a moral teacher. I would agree that using drugs for these purposes can—and should—make people uncomfortable, and we should take this discomfort seriously. But these qualms, as I have argued elsewhere, are not enough to show that all, or even most, such uses are morally unsuitable (Dees 2007). The second objection, that moral enhancements cannot generate moral reason to act, is more promising. What is right about Jotterand’s point is that we can judge the manipulations of moral emotions as an improvement in our morality only if we already have a moral measuring rod. We need a standard of morality that entails the judgment that, for example, making people more trusting makes them morally better before we can conclude that a drug like oxytocin makes people more moral. In truth, of course, becoming more trusting as such does not make a person morally better—too much trust is morally irresponsible (see Dees 2004, chap. 2)—so our ability to trust must be calibrated exactly right. A drug might help us get that calibration right; we may find that years in therapy or moral training are not enough to achieve the right degree of trust. But just as a doctor must have a normative conception of health to decide on the right course of therapy for her or his patients, we must have a conception of a good person before we can know what changes would help us realize those goals. Jotterand’s complaint, then, is that the moral enhancements project has a normative hole at its heart. Noticing that hole, of course, does not require us to turn to MacIntyre. Indeed, Hume himself is pointing to a similar hole when he warns us against thinkers who mysteriously move from “is” statements to “ought” statements (Hume 1740/2000, 3.1.1.27). The transhumanists, however, are often honest about their normative assumptions. James Hughes, for example, wants to use neurotechnologies to “assist our adherence to self-chosen moral codes and citizenship obligations” (quoted in Jotterand 2011, 4). He, like many transhumanists, invokes a quasi-libertarian normative view that makes morality a matter of individual choice. I, too, find such a view of morality unattractive, precisely because it disregards the fundamentally social nature of morality and the external constraints that I think are the key to an adequate moral theory. But to accept that point does not require me to accept any of MacIntyre’s mis-history or Jotterand’s Aristotelianism. My Humeanism can adequately make that point, as could any number of modern moral theories.