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Unfreedom or Mere Inability? The Case of Biomedical Enhancement.

Ji Young Lee
Published in: The Journal of medicine and philosophy (2024)
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.
Keyphrases
  • healthcare
  • mental health
  • endothelial cells
  • magnetic resonance imaging
  • metabolic syndrome
  • induced pluripotent stem cells
  • decision making
  • risk assessment
  • computed tomography
  • dual energy