ABSTRACT

The Routledge Handbook of the Ethics of Human Enhancement provides readers with a philosophically rich and scientifically grounded analysis of human enhancement and its ethical implications. A landmark in the academic literature, the volume covers human enhancement in genetic engineering, neuroscience, synthetic biology, regenerative medicine, bioengineering, and many other fields. The Handbook includes a diverse and multifaceted collection of 30 chapters—all appearing here in print for the first time— that reveal the fundamental ethical challenges related to human enhancement. The chapters have been written by internationally recognized leaders in the field and are organized into seven parts:

  1. Historical Background and Key Concepts
  2. Human Enhancement and Human Nature
  3. Physical Enhancement
  4. Cognitive Enhancement
  5. Mood Enhancement and Moral Enhancement
  6. Human Enhancement and Medicine
  7. Legal, Social, and Political Implications

The depth and topical range of the Handbook makes it an essential resource for upper-level undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows in a broad variety of disciplinary areas. Furthermore, it is an authoritative reference for basic scientists, philosophers, engineers, physicians, lawyers, and other professionals who work on the topic of human enhancement.

chapter |6 pages

Introduction

part II|98 pages

Human enhancement and human nature

chapter 4|30 pages

Clones, chimeras, and organoids

Developmental biology and the human future

chapter 5|10 pages

A thematic overview

Debating the ethics of radical enhancement

chapter 6|16 pages

Resurrecting the ‘body’

Phenomenological perspectives on embodiment

part III|44 pages

Physical enhancement

chapter 10|9 pages

The Ethics of Genetic Enhancement

Key Concepts and Future Prospects

chapter 11|8 pages

Germline gene editing with CRISPR

A risk-analysis response to liberal eugenics

part IV|64 pages

Cognitive enhancement

chapter 14|13 pages

AI as IA

The use and abuse of artificial intelligence (AI) for human enhancement through intellectual augmentation (IA)

chapter 16|10 pages

Not extended, but enhanced

Internal improvements to cognition and the maintenance of cognitive agency

part VI|50 pages

Human enhancement and medicine

chapter 24|12 pages

Clinical practice and human enhancement

Blurred borders and ethical issues

chapter 25|9 pages

Cyborgs and designer babies

The human body as a technological design space

chapter 26|17 pages

Pharmaceutical cognitive enhancement

Entanglement with emotion, morality, and context