TY - JOUR

T1 - Unfreedom or Mere Inability?

T2 - The Case of Biomedical Enhancement

AU - Lee, Ji Young

N1 - © The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy Inc. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

PY - 2024

Y1 - 2024

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

U2 - 10.1093/jmp/jhae007

DO - 10.1093/jmp/jhae007

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 38418080

VL - 49

SP - 195

EP - 206

JO - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy

JF - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy

SN - 0360-5310

IS - 2

ER -