The risks of progress: precaution and the case of human enhancement

摘要

So-called 'enhancement technologies' are technologies that promise to boost human mental and physical capacities beyond the normal upper range found in our species. Here it is argued that some of the most salient questions about the ethics of enhancement concern the ethics of risk, and precaution in particular. This paper uses recent work by John Harris to expose these risk-based considerations, and it aims to temper Harris's enthusiasm for enhancement. More specifically, it is argued that a defensible set of precautionary concerns can be isolated, which supports scepticism regarding the wisdom of adopting many enhancements in the near and medium-term future. This way of understanding precaution can be generalised to justify a form of scepticism about promises of progress.