Research project: Responsibility and Human Enhancement

Darian Meacham is a partner in an ISRF (Independent Social Research Foundation) funded project on Responsibility and Human Enhancement. The project aims to critically apply an RRI framework to the debate surrounding human enhancement. An initial short paper explaining the project and its aims has been published in the ISRF bulletin and can be accessed and downloaded.

Human enhancement can be defined as the intentional improvement of individuals’ capacities with the help of technical or biomedical interventions in or on the human body[1]. Enhancement has become prominent in policy[2], ethics[3], and everyday life, like in the case of doping in sport or of stimulants used as study aids[4]. Conceptual refinement and methodological development is needed for the social sciences and humanities to contribute to its responsible governance. This project addresses both dimensions, connecting the literature on enhancement with the scholarship on responsible science and innovation. This perspective emphasises the aligning of STI with societal goals, as in EU Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) approach[5].

The project applies a responsibility perspective to enhancement governance. To do so, it gathers an interdisciplinary group of social scientists and humanities scholars to achieve the following objectives:

  1. organise a workshop on responsibility and human enhancement;
  2. retool techno-moral scenarios method for exploring human enhancement governance;
  3. start a longer-term research network on responsibility and enhancement.

References

(1) Sauter, A. & Gerlinger, K. The pharmacologically improved human.(TAB, 2013).

(2) Roco, MC., & Bainbridge, WS. Converging technologies for improving human performance. (National Science Foundation, 2002).

(3) European Group of Ethics. Ethical aspects of ICT implants in the human body. (European Commission, 2005).

(4) Coveney, C., Gabe, J. & Williams, S. The sociology of cognitive enhancement: Medicalisation and beyond. Health Sociol. Rev. 20, 381–393 (2011).

(5) Owen, R. et al. in Responsible Innovation (eds. Owen, R., Heintz, M. & Bessant, J.) 27–50 (Wiley, 2013).

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