Transhumanism, our pluralist moral duties to the poor and how to effectively address global poverty

Abstract

Prominent transhumanists Julian Savulescu, Ingmar Persson, and Thomas Douglas argue that moral enhancement could solve global poverty. They argue that by engineering individuals with better moral dispositions, they will have better motives, and therefore the will to act more morally. These morally enhanced individuals will more effectively discharge their duties regarding global poverty, thus leading to more rapid poverty alleviation. In this paper I will present an account of the moral duties wealthy individuals hold to the global poor. These moral duties are not singular (either to do no harm or to provide assistance), but rather are complex and pluralist, and dependent on the position of the agent with regards to the global poor. Further, I will argue that the moral enhancement some transhumanists are envisioning to alleviate poverty fails to recognize the pluralist duties wealthy individuals have regarding poverty alleviation. In fact, moral enhancement would be counterproductive by virtue of i) failing to recognize our various moral reasons to alleviate global poverty ii) failing to allow individuals to evaluate their moral duties to others, therefore to effectively discharge them, and iii) that failing to recognize i) & ii) would bring about morally undesirable consequences; ineffective poverty alleviation and enhanced-individuals’ loss of autonomy. Therefore, even if we grant that individuals have only one reason to alleviate global poverty, it is not clear how moral enhancement can effectively address global poverty, since poverty alleviation is an issue that requires political, economic and institutional action. In the first section of this thesis I will review transhumanism, specifically the "moral enhancement"(ME) proposition. In the second section I will present my pluralist account of the moral duties affluent individuals have to the poor. In the third section, I will analyse the transhumanist's proposal to alleviate global poverty via moral enhancement, and I will contrast their argument with my pluralist account of moral duties in order to determine if ME will achieve poverty reduction.