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Can we be better?
Perspectives
Books Can we be better?
How To Be Good John Harris. Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp 192. US$40·00. ISBN 9780198707592
120
It seems to me deeply immoral that a 21-year-old woman was given a suspended prison sentence in Northern Ireland earlier this year for procuring an abortion pill over the internet and taking it. But if I am going to engage seriously with those who passed this judgment, I must recognise that they regard the woman’s actions as immoral with equal conviction. Such contingency of deep moral beliefs makes it hard to imagine how philosopher John Harris is going to tell us “how to be good” in such a short book. And in fact he isn’t. His book really looks instead at the question: can we be better? That’s to say, can we, and should we, make interventions that enhance people’s moral judgment? Of course, we already do make such interventions; that’s partly what education is supposed to be about, for one thing. But new technologies, stemming particularly from neurochemistry and brain imaging, seem to raise the possibility of biomedical manipulation of moral instincts, and perhaps even of pre-emptively monitoring the moral (or amoral) decisions we will make, Minority Report-style. What are the rights and wrongs here? Harris is particularly concerned about moral agency. If there were some medical intervention that makes behaviour more altruistic, should we use it? Are we in any meaningful way “enhancing morality” if the treatment leads to automatic “good” behaviour rather than simply helping us reach the right decision cognitively? Harris argues that “there is no virtue in doing what you must”—for example, under the influence of a drug that programs you not to do bad things. That isn’t just a philosophical question but a theological one: in Christian tradition, God gave us free will where he could
simply have programmed us to be morally impeccable. Yet the issue of morality is surely not just about individual choice, but about the broader good. I would prefer a society in which people made up their own minds not to hurt me— but if they don’t make that choice, I’d rather there were other disincentives and protections too. Morality is a social as well as a personal matter. We already do administer moodaltering drugs, including ones that reduce violent behaviour. Perhaps this can’t reasonably be considered to enhance the morality of the individual concerned, but that doesn’t settle the question of whether it is moral to offer, enforce, or withhold such treatments.
“… can we, and should we, make interventions that enhance people’s moral judgment?” So the book becomes a discussion not of what it means to be good but of the reasonable limits of constraint on our ability to do things universally deemed to be bad, like harming others without just cause. In other words, it is concerned with what liberty could and should mean. That is an old philosophical saw, and depends to some extent on your view of human nature: while John Locke believed that the free person is naturally inclined to act well, Thomas Hobbes considered selfishness the “state of nature”. Since no one is raised in a moral vacuum, we have no way of knowing who was right (or if the question is even meaningful). Harris is right to say that the prospect of “moral enhancement” brings these issues back to the table, but sadly he doesn’t much deepen the debate. For a start it was not clear to me what he means by moral enhancement. Sometimes Harris seems to be implying some
medical, neurochemical, or genetic intervention, at other times simply the social means we have already. It’s not until page 80 that we’re offered any hint of what the former might entail, with a passing reference to manipulation of serotonin or oxytocin concentrations. Harris says nothing about the current status of such work or what can realistically be expected from it. If all we mean here is reducing aggressive behaviour, that seems a very narrow view of morality—and even then, not without complications. More than anything, though, How To Be Good is hampered by being a salvo in several ongoing academic disputes. I felt as though I’d walked in halfway through a squabble between academics, and had to work out what it was all about. The book can also be hard to read. Harris admits at the outset to some repetition—there are verbatim repeats of chunks of texts, including footnotes. The book seemed to me like a stack of essays, printed in the order they were thrown together and without much thought to filling in the gaps. It’s a real shame, because Harris has some important things to say on a controversial and urgent subject. He argues, for instance, that moral enhancement can’t just be a matter of prodding our emotions in the right direction—it will surely have rational cognition at its core. This is why suggestions that moral enhancement must urgently precede cognitive enhancement (lest we foster homicidal geniuses) make a false distinction between the categories. Harris is right that morality must be more than what “feels right”. But what kind of more?
Philip Ball Philip Ball is the author of Invisible: The Dangerous Allure of the Unseen (Bodley Head, 2014).
www.thelancet.com Vol 388 July 9, 2016
Books Can we be better?
How To Be Good John Harris. Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp 192. US$40·00. ISBN 9780198707592
120
It seems to me deeply immoral that a 21-year-old woman was given a suspended prison sentence in Northern Ireland earlier this year for procuring an abortion pill over the internet and taking it. But if I am going to engage seriously with those who passed this judgment, I must recognise that they regard the woman’s actions as immoral with equal conviction. Such contingency of deep moral beliefs makes it hard to imagine how philosopher John Harris is going to tell us “how to be good” in such a short book. And in fact he isn’t. His book really looks instead at the question: can we be better? That’s to say, can we, and should we, make interventions that enhance people’s moral judgment? Of course, we already do make such interventions; that’s partly what education is supposed to be about, for one thing. But new technologies, stemming particularly from neurochemistry and brain imaging, seem to raise the possibility of biomedical manipulation of moral instincts, and perhaps even of pre-emptively monitoring the moral (or amoral) decisions we will make, Minority Report-style. What are the rights and wrongs here? Harris is particularly concerned about moral agency. If there were some medical intervention that makes behaviour more altruistic, should we use it? Are we in any meaningful way “enhancing morality” if the treatment leads to automatic “good” behaviour rather than simply helping us reach the right decision cognitively? Harris argues that “there is no virtue in doing what you must”—for example, under the influence of a drug that programs you not to do bad things. That isn’t just a philosophical question but a theological one: in Christian tradition, God gave us free will where he could
simply have programmed us to be morally impeccable. Yet the issue of morality is surely not just about individual choice, but about the broader good. I would prefer a society in which people made up their own minds not to hurt me— but if they don’t make that choice, I’d rather there were other disincentives and protections too. Morality is a social as well as a personal matter. We already do administer moodaltering drugs, including ones that reduce violent behaviour. Perhaps this can’t reasonably be considered to enhance the morality of the individual concerned, but that doesn’t settle the question of whether it is moral to offer, enforce, or withhold such treatments.
“… can we, and should we, make interventions that enhance people’s moral judgment?” So the book becomes a discussion not of what it means to be good but of the reasonable limits of constraint on our ability to do things universally deemed to be bad, like harming others without just cause. In other words, it is concerned with what liberty could and should mean. That is an old philosophical saw, and depends to some extent on your view of human nature: while John Locke believed that the free person is naturally inclined to act well, Thomas Hobbes considered selfishness the “state of nature”. Since no one is raised in a moral vacuum, we have no way of knowing who was right (or if the question is even meaningful). Harris is right to say that the prospect of “moral enhancement” brings these issues back to the table, but sadly he doesn’t much deepen the debate. For a start it was not clear to me what he means by moral enhancement. Sometimes Harris seems to be implying some
medical, neurochemical, or genetic intervention, at other times simply the social means we have already. It’s not until page 80 that we’re offered any hint of what the former might entail, with a passing reference to manipulation of serotonin or oxytocin concentrations. Harris says nothing about the current status of such work or what can realistically be expected from it. If all we mean here is reducing aggressive behaviour, that seems a very narrow view of morality—and even then, not without complications. More than anything, though, How To Be Good is hampered by being a salvo in several ongoing academic disputes. I felt as though I’d walked in halfway through a squabble between academics, and had to work out what it was all about. The book can also be hard to read. Harris admits at the outset to some repetition—there are verbatim repeats of chunks of texts, including footnotes. The book seemed to me like a stack of essays, printed in the order they were thrown together and without much thought to filling in the gaps. It’s a real shame, because Harris has some important things to say on a controversial and urgent subject. He argues, for instance, that moral enhancement can’t just be a matter of prodding our emotions in the right direction—it will surely have rational cognition at its core. This is why suggestions that moral enhancement must urgently precede cognitive enhancement (lest we foster homicidal geniuses) make a false distinction between the categories. Harris is right that morality must be more than what “feels right”. But what kind of more?
Philip Ball Philip Ball is the author of Invisible: The Dangerous Allure of the Unseen (Bodley Head, 2014).
www.thelancet.com Vol 388 July 9, 2016