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Saving the World through Sacrificing Liberties? A Critique of some Normative Arguments in Unfit for the Future

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Abstract

The paper critically engages with some of the normative arguments in Julian Savulescu and Ingmar Persson’s book Unfit for the Future. In particular, it scrutinizes the authors’ argument in denial of a moral right to privacy as well as their political proposal to alter humankind’s moral psychology in order to avert climate change, terrorism and to redress global injustice.

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Notes

  1. For an early rebuttal of Thomson see Scanlon [5]

  2. For a longer argument against the claim that persons who are morally enhanced against their will may still make “their own decisions”, see [23].

  3. On a related note, I hint at a further inconsistency: P&S assume a moral right to property despite recognizing its unstable theoretical foundations. I do not seek to argue against such a right but like to draw attention to the following: A hierarchy of norms in which property-rights over external things rank higher than mental privacy or freedom of thought and belief is utterly inconceivable. Almost logically, the relation of a person to external things must come secondary to establishing the rights of persons to themselves, and the latter must outweigh entitlements to the former. Otherwise, it would be permissible to shield against interferences with property rights by infringing upon rights to the person. This might be permissible in exceptional circumstances but is quite untenable as a general rule. Thus: whoever acknowledges property rights should likewise accept rights to the person, of which mental privacy is an indispensible part.

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  1. Faculty of Law, University of Hamburg, Rothenbaumchaussee 33, 20148, Hamburg, Germany

    Jan Christoph Bublitz

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Bublitz, J.C. Saving the World through Sacrificing Liberties? A Critique of some Normative Arguments in Unfit for the Future. Neuroethics 12, 23–34 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-016-9265-8

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