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Bioconservatism is a philosophical and ethical stance that emphasizes caution and restraint in the use of biotechnologies, particularly those involving genetic manipulation and human enhancement.
Bioconservatism is characterized by a belief that technological trends risk compromising human dignity, and by opposition to movements and technologies including transhumanism, human genetic modification, "strong" artificial intelligence, and the technological singularity. Many bioconservatives also oppose the use of technologies such as life extension and preimplantation genetic screening.
Bioconservatives range in political perspective from right-leaning religious and cultural conservatives to left-leaning environmentalism and technology critics. What unifies bioconservatives is skepticism about medical and other biotechnological transformations of the biosphere. (2011). 9780865717046, New Society Publishers. ISBN 9780865717046 In contrast to bioluddism, the bioconservative perspective typically presents a more focused critique of technological society. It is distinguished by its defense of the natural, framed as a moral category.
Critics of bioconservatism, such as Steve Clarke and Rebecca Roache, argue that bioconservatives ground their views primarily in intuition, which can be subject to various cognitive biases. They consider bioconservatives to be unable to provide concrete reasons to justify their intuitions, contributing to stalled debate around human enhancement.
The three major elements of the bioconservative argument, as described by Bostrom, are firstly, that human augmentation is innately degrading and therefore harmful; secondly, that the existence of augmented humans poses a threat to "ordinary humans;" and thirdly, that human augmentation shows a lack of acknowledgement that "not everything in the world is open to any use we may desire or devise." The first two of these elements are secular whilst the last derives "from religious or crypto-religious sentiments."
Sandel insists that consequentialist arguments overlook the principle issue of whether bioenhancement should be aspired to at all. He is attributed with the view that human augmentation should be avoided as it expresses an excessive desire to change oneself and 'become masters of our nature.' For example, in the field of cognitive enhancement, he argues that moral question we should be concerned with is not the consequences of inequality of access to such technology in possibly creating two classes of humans but whether we should aspire to such enhancement at all. Similarly, he has argued that the ethical problem with genetic engineering is not that it undermines the child's autonomy, as this claim "wrongly implies that absent a designing parent, children are free to choose their characteristics for themselves." Rather, he sees enhancement as hubristic, taking nature into our own hands: pursuing the fixity of enhancement is an instance of vanity. Sandel also criticizes the argument that a genetically engineered athlete would have an unfair advantage over his unenhanced competitors, suggesting that it has always been the case that some athletes are better endowed genetically than others. In short, Sandel argues that the real ethical problems with genetic engineering concern its effects on humility, Obligation and solidarity.
The problem lies in the hubris of the designing parents, in their drive to master the mystery of genetics. Even if this disposition did not make parents tyrants to their children, it would disfigure the relation between parent and child, thus depriving the parent of the humility and enlarged human sympathies that an openness to the unbidden can cultivate.
Essentially, Sandel believes that in order to be a good parent with the virtue of humility, one needs to accept that their child may not progress exactly according to their expectations. Designing an athletic child, for example, is incompatible with the idea of parents having such open expectations. He argues that genetic enhancement deprives the parent of the humility of an 'openness to the unbidden' fosters. Sandel believes that parents must be prepared to love their child unconditionally and to see their children as gifts from nature, rather than entities to be defined according to parental and genetic expectations. Moreover, in the paper The Case Against Perfection, Sandel argues:
I do not think the main problem with enhancement and genetic engineering is that they undermine effort and erode human agency. The deeper danger is that they represent a kind of hyperagency—a Promethean aspiration to remake nature, including human nature, to serve our purposes and satisfy our desires".
In doing so, Sandel worries that an essential aspect of human nature - and the meaning of life derived from such, would be eroded in the process of expanding radically beyond our naturally endowed capacities. He calls this yearning the "Promethean project," which is necessarily constrained by appreciating our humility and place in nature. Sandel adds:
It is in part a religious sensibility. But its resonance reaches beyond religion.
Sandel argues that solidarity 'arises when men and women reflect on the contingency of their talents and fortunes.' He argues that if our genetic endowments begin to be seen as 'achievements for which we can claim credit,' society would have no obligation to share with those less fortunate. Consequently, Sandel mounts a case against the perfection of genetic knowledge because it would end the solidarity arising when people reflect on the non-necessary nature of their fortunes.
In brief, he argues that for three main reasons there is something wrong with biotechnological enhancement. Kass calls them the arguments of "the attitude of mastery," "'unnatural' means" and "dubious ends."
Before he turns to these arguments, he focuses on the distinction between "therapy" and "enhancement." While therapy has the aim of (re-)establishing the state of what could be considered as "normal" (e.g. replacement of organs), enhancement gives people an advantage over the "normal workings" of the human body (e.g. immortality). On the basis of this distinction, Kass argues, most people would support therapy, but remain sceptical towards enhancement. However, he believes this distinction is not clear, since it is hard to tell where therapy stops and enhancement begins. One reason he gives is that the "normal workings" of the human body cannot be unambiguously defined due to the variance within humans: someone may be born with perfect pitch, another deaf.
Nick Bostrom and Rebecca Roache reply to this by giving an instance where one may clearly speak of permissible enhancement. They claim that extending a life (i.e. making it longer than it would normally have been) means that one saves this particular life. Since one would believe it is morally permissible to save lives (as long as no harm is caused), they claim that there is no good reason to believe extending a life is impermissible. The relevance of the counterargument presented by Bostrom and Roache becomes clearer when the essence of Kass's skepticism with 'enhancement' is considered Firstly, he labels natural human experiences like aging, death and unhappiness as preconditions of human flourishing. Given that technological enhancement diminishes these preconditions and therefore hinders human flourishing, he is able to assert that enhancement is not morally permissible. Bostrom and Roache challenge Kass's inherent assumption that extending life is different from saving it. In other words, they argue that by alleviating ageing and death, someone's life is being extended, which is no different from saving their life. By this argument, the concept of human flourishing becomes entirely irrelevant since it is morally permissible to save someone's life, regardless of whether they are leading a flourishing life or not.
Due to the unawareness of the goodness of potential ends, Kass claims this not to be mastery at all. Instead, we are acting on the momentary whims that nature exposes us to, effectively making it impossible for humanity to escape from the "grip of our own nature."
Kass builds on Sandel's argument that transhumanists fail to properly recognise the 'giftedness' of the world. He agrees that this idea is useful in that it should teach us an attitude of modesty, restraint and humility. However, he believes it will not by itself sufficiently indicate which things can be manipulated and which should be left untouched. Therefore, Kass additionally proposes that we must also respect the 'givenness' of species-specified natures – 'given' in the sense of something fixed and specified.
Kass suggests that the struggles one has to go through to achieve excellence "is not only the source of our deeds, but also their product." Therefore, they build character. He maintains that biotechnology as a shortcut does not build character but instead erodes self-control. This can be seen in how confronting fearful things might eventually enable us to cope with our fears, unlike a pill which merely prevents people from experiencing fear and thereby doesn't help us overcome it. As Kass notes, "people who take pills to block out from memory the painful or hateful aspects of new experience will not learn how to deal with suffering or sorrow. A drug to induce fearlessness does not produce courage." He contends that there is a necessity in having limited biotechnological enhancement for humans as it recognises giftedness and forges humility.
Kass notes that while there are biological interventions that may assist in the pursuit of excellence without cheapening its attainment, "partly because many of life's excellences have nothing to do with competition or adversity," (e.g. "drugs to decrease drowsiness or increase alertness... may actually help people in their natural pursuits of learning or painting or performing their civic duty,") "the point is less the exertions of good character against hardship, but the manifestation of an alert and self-experiencing agent making his deeds flow intentionally from his willing, knowing, and embodied soul." Kass argues that we need to have an "intelligible connection" between means and ends in order to call one's bodies, minds, and transformations genuinely their own.
However, Kass argues that human limitation is what gives the opportunity for happiness. Firstly, he argues that "a concern with one's own improving agelessness is finally incompatible with accepting the need for procreation and human renewal." This creates a world "hostile to children," and arguably "increasingly dominated by anxiety over health and the fear of death." This is because the existence of decline and decay is precisely what allows us to accept mortality. The hostility towards children is resultant of the redundancy of new generations to the progression of the human species, given infinite lifespan; progression and evolution of the human race would no longer arise from procreation and succession, but from the engineered enhancement of existing generations. Secondly, He explains that one needs to grieve in order to love, and that one must feel a lack to be capable of aspiration:
... human fulfillment depends on our being creatures of need and finitude and hence of longings and attachment.
Finally, Kass warns, "the engaged and energetic being-at-work of what uniquely gave to us is what we need to treasure and defend. All other perfection is at best a passing illusion, at worst a Faustian bargain that will cost us our full and flourishing humanity."
Eugenic interventions aiming at enhancement reduce ethical freedom insofar as they tie down the person concerned to rejected, but irreversible intentions of third parties, barring him from the spontaneous self-perception of being the undivided author of his own life.
However, although the opportunity can be turned down, this does not make it any less of a violation from being forced into an irreversible situation. Genetic modification has two large-scale consequences. Firstly, no action the child undertakes can be ascribed to her own negotiation with the natural lottery, since a 'third party' has negotiated on the child's behalf. This imperils the sense of responsibility for one's own life that comes along with freedom. As such, individuals' self-understanding as ethical beings is endangered, opening the door to ethical nihilism. This is so because the genetic modification creates a type of dependence in which one of the parts does not even have the hypothetical possibility of changing social places with the other. Secondly, it becomes impossible to collectively and democratically establish moral rules through communication, since a condition for their establishment is the possibility to question assertions. Genetically modified individuals, however, never realise if their very questioning might have been informed by enhancement, nor can they question it. That being said, Habermas acknowledges that our societies are full of asymmetric relationships, such as oppression of minorities or exploitation. However, these conditions could be different. On the contrary, genetic modification cannot be reverted once it is performed.
Bostrom argues in the article that Francis Fukuyama's concerns about the threats transhumanism pose to dignity as moral status - that transhumanism might strip away humanity's inalienable right of respect- lacks empirical evidence. He states that the proportion of people given full moral respect in Western societies has actually increased through history. This increase includes such populations as non-whites, women and non-property owners. Following this logic, it will similarly be feasible to incorporate future posthumans without compensating the dignities of the rest of the population.
Bostrom then goes on to discuss dignity in the sense of moral worthiness, which varies among individuals. He suggests that posthumans can similarly possess dignity in this sense. Further, he suggests, it is possible that posthumans, being genetically enhanced, may come to possess even higher levels of moral excellence than contemporary human beings. While he considers that certain posthumans may live more degraded lives as a result of self-enhancement, he also notes that even at this time many people are not living worthy lives either. He finds this regrettable and suggests that countermeasures as education and cultural reforms can be helpful in curtailing such practices. Bostrom supports the morphological and reproductive freedoms of human beings, suggesting that ultimately, leading whatever life one aspires should be an unalienable right.
Reproductive freedom means that parents should be free to choose the technological enhancements they want when having a child. According to Bostrom, there is no reason to prefer the random processes of nature over human design. He dismisses claims that describe this kind of operations as "tyranny" of the parents over their future children. In his opinion, the tyranny of nature is no different. In fact, he claims that "Had Mother Nature been a real parent, she would have been in jail for child abuse and murder."
Earlier in the paper, Bostrom also replies to Leon Kass with the claim that, in his words, "nature's gifts are sometimes poisoned and should not always be accepted." He makes the point that nature cannot be relied upon for normative standards. Instead, he suggests that transhumanism can, over time, allow for the technical improvement of "human nature," consistent with our widely held societal morals.
According to Bostrom, the way that bioconservatives justify banning certain human enhancements while not others, reveal the double standard that is present in this line of thought. For him, a misleading conception of human dignity is to blame for this. We mistakenly take for granted that human nature is an intrinsic, unmodifiable set of properties. This problem, he argues, is overcome when human nature is conceived as 'dynamic, partially human-made, and improvable.' If we acknowledge that social and technological factors influence our nature, then dignity 'consists in what we are and what we have the potential to become, not in our pedigree or social origin'. It can be seen, then, than improved capabilities does not affect moral status, and that we should sustain an inclusive view that recognize our enhanced descendants as possessors of dignity. Transhumanists reject the notion that there is a significant moral difference between enhancing human lives through technological means compared to other methods.
Distinguishing between types of enhancement
Bostrom discusses a criticism leveled against transhumanists by bioconservatives, that children who are biologically enhanced by certain kinds of technologies will face psychological anguish because of the enhancement.
Bostrom finds that bioconservatives rely on a false dichotomy between technological enhancements that are harmful and those that are not, thus challenging premise two. Bostrom argues that children whose mothers played Mozart to them in the womb would not face psychological anguish upon discovering that their musical talents had been "prenatally programmed by her parents." However, he finds that bioconservative writers often employ analogous arguments to the contrary demonstrating that technological enhancements, rather than playing Mozart in the womb, could potentially disturb children.
Climate change
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> How Climate Change Makes Bioconservatism the Most Relevant Ideology, Chet Bowers, Truthout, 2016.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Bioengineer humans to tackle climate change, say philosophers, The Guardian, 2012, featuring Rebecca Roache
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