Abstract
David Wasserman and Stephen Campbell call for a reconsideration of our understanding of ability and enhancement in light of the increasingly blurry line between bodies and environments. They advocate for a way of seeing human enhancement in light of technologies that do not modify a person’s body. Specifically, they favor a broader conception of enhancement that acknowledges that a person’s abilities cannot be evaluated in isolation from a person’s environment. This approach challenges the social model of disability by demonstrating that the distinction between a bodily modification and an environmental modification isn’t always justified. Wasserman and Campbell’s broader focus also demonstrates why it is a mistake for bioethicists and commentators to evaluate individual bodily changes in ability without considering how those changes would also change human environments.
We thank Tina Rulli, Sven Nyholm, and the participants at the Jepson Colloquium 2015–2016, “Ability and Enhancement,” University of Richmond, for their comments on a draft of this paper.
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Notes
- 1.
Admittedly, an internal feature may make the individual appear more enhanced. This point is well made in an example from Keith Abney:
[C]ompare a person who uses Google Translate on their mobile device to communicate with the local population on their trip to a foreign land, versus a person with a Google translation chip implanted in their head. The first would be recognized by the natives merely as someone who knows how to use a computer; the latter, meanwhile, might well be taken as fluent in the foreign language, with whatever social advantages that would entail. In other words, when it comes to proximity of a technological aid to the user, the less visible the tool is to outsiders, the better. (Abney 2013, p. 35)
But it is hard to see why the appearance of enhancement should matter in assessing the extent to which a person is in fact enhanced. The practical advantages of this appearance do not by themselves lead to greater ability or function in the second tourist.
- 2.
We are hardly the first to suggest a broad view of human enhancement . In Buchanan (2011), Allen Buchanan embraces the very broad conception of “enhancement” that Allhoff et al. (2009) reject, e.g., classifying literacy and science as enhancements. He utilizes this broad understanding to argue that enhancement is nothing new and nothing objectionable, so we shouldn’t be so fearful of the enhancements on the horizon.
- 3.
We will also bracket the question of whether the term “enhancement” should be limited to improvements that raise a function above the normal range, or should include improvements that raise a function to, or within, the normal range. We will use the term in the latter sense.
- 4.
To indulge in a bit of speculation, if BCI technology becomes widespread, people may eventually get “wired” to their home environment so that they can effect all sorts of changes (turn on/off lights; open blinds; alter the structural layout) by mental effort alone. This would represent an even more dramatic challenge to the distinction between modifying the individual and the environment, and a further reduction in the functional significance of impairments.
- 5.
We say “may not” rather than “cannot” because we cannot rule out futures in which technology really does make variations in human bodies almost irrelevant and undetectable. For example, the film Surrogates depicts a society in which almost everyone lays at home in their “experience machines” and remotely controls a robot surrogate that does all of their living for them. If nondisabled people stop using their bodies (as it happens in that society), perhaps some kinds of disability, particularly motor and sensory disabilities, would cease to matter. In such a society, it might not even be known who had these disabilities, since people will only interact with others’ surrogates and never encounter their actual bodies. It’s not clear that many disability categories would still be relevant in a world where this surrogate lifestyle was universal.
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The views expressed in this essay are the authors’ own. They do not represent the positions or policies of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Public Health Service, or Department of Health and Human Services.
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Wasserman, D., Campbell, S.M. (2018). A More “Inclusive” Approach to Enhancement and Disability. In: Flanigan, J., Price, T. (eds) The Ethics of Ability and Enhancement. Jepson Studies in Leadership. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95303-5_3
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