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- Title
Unfreedom or Mere Inability? The Case of Biomedical Enhancement.
- Authors
Lee, Ji Young
- Abstract
Mere inability, which refers to what persons are naturally unable to do, is traditionally thought to be distinct from unfreedom, which is a social type of constraint. The advent of biomedical enhancement, however, challenges the idea that there is a clear division between mere inability and unfreedom. This is because bioenhancement makes it possible for some people's mere inabilities to become matters of unfreedom. In this paper, I discuss several ways that this might occur: first, bioenhancement can exacerbate social pressures to enhance one's abilities; second, people may face discrimination for not enhancing; third, the new abilities made possible due to bioenhancement may be accompanied by new inabilities for the enhanced and unenhanced; and finally, shifting values around abilities and inabilities due to bioenhancement may reinforce a pre-existing ableism about human abilities. As such, we must give careful consideration to these potential unfreedom-generating outcomes when it comes to our moral evaluations of bioenhancement.
- Subjects
SOCIAL pressure; SOCIAL types; ABLEISM
- Publication
Journal of Medicine & Philosophy, 2024, Vol 49, Issue 2, p195
- ISSN
0360-5310
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/jmp/jhae007