Human Enhancement: Conceptual Clarity and Moral Significance

Abstract

Debates about human enhancement and capacity-altering biotechnologies are often impeded by a lack of clarity about the concept of enhancement. This chapter identifies seven different accounts of enhancement that have been described in the literature. It argues that there is no need to abandon the term ‘enhancement’, as has been suggested by some theorists. One way in which the term is useful is by drawing our attention to morally relevant spectra. For example, if we understand interventions to be enhancements to the degree that they involve improvement over a (relatively) high level of functioning, and interventions to be treatments to the degree that they involve improvement over a (relativ..