A Minor Musing About The NSDA's Potential 2017-2018 Proposed Human Enhancement Technologies Resolution

Moving on to Resolved: The non-therapeutic use of human enhancement technologies is immoral.

Given that a Wisconsin company is offering to implant an RFID chip into employees hands so that employees can access vending machines. this one seems timely. (Trust me, accessing a vending machine when one has no cash would turn any normal human into an enhanced being.)

The inevitable "Mark of the Beast" arguments aside, a recent paper set up the potential debate:

A world where everyone is more intelligent will have a cumulative benefit for society, unless of course there is a trade-off between characteristics, say where increased capacity for logic is to the detriment of an ability to empathize with people or where altruism decreases. While there is no evidence to support this concern, it is important to be mindful of the complexity of some neurological constructs—such as intelligence—which may imply improving the functionality of a number different forms (emotional intelligence, rational intelligence), before one can reasonably claim that it has been improved.

The quotation sets up two major concerns that this resolution raises. First, nearly all arguments about the "non-therapeutic use of human enhancement technologies" will be "what if" or "slippery slope." In addition, many of the "scientific" arguments will be stated with certainty that the science may not necessarily support.

Cutting edge science arguments also pose a problem because debaters, judges, and coaches are likely behind the curve on all of these issues. Evaluating cutting edge arguments may not be our strong suit.

I have two other concerns. The first will be the definitional debate. The article linked to contains the following caveat:

Alternatively, genetic enhancement is likely to have different implications from using a pharmaceutical product or a prosthetic device to yield a similar effect. Indeed, debates about the ethics of human enhancement are already so nuanced as to be focused on specific kinds of enhancement, such as neurological, biochemical, or physiological modifications.

In addition to the arguments about whether "physiological" or "biochemical" is or is not  "human enhancement"  will likely get old quick. Further, the arguments that "we should negate because two of the three are ok even if the other is really immoral" will also get old quickly.

Finally, the moral arguments that have been run lately have bothered me. I still am not certain why. This sentence, however,  resonated, at least for now.

There are not always formal ethical codes that govern our existence. Instead people make decisions based on loose, often poorly defined moral frameworks, which nevertheless may guide their actions and organize social conduct.

In short, it's unclear when people apply moral codes, and this resolution may make debaters fit the proverbial square theory into the proverbial round situational hole.

Rankings and voting recommendations will follow the final post on the potential 2017 topics.