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Distributive justice, equality and the enhancement of human cognition: A commentary on fairness and ‘cognitive doping’
- Source :
- International Journal of Drug Policy. 95:102874
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- Elsevier BV, 2021.
-
Abstract
- What implications might the use of techniques to enhance human cognition have for the kind of polities or civil societies we inhabit? What might political philosophy, if anything, have to tell us about the desirability of using drugs to increase our intellectual powers? Much of the focus in contemporary debates about human enhancement has been upon the ethical desirability of endeavouring to enhance our capacities: should we be meddling with ‘human nature’, as it were? Therapeutic uses of drugs are regarded as acceptable but enhancement is frowned upon in much of this literature. This rejection of enhancement is especially prevalent in the area of sport where there is a great deal of opposition to doping. Herein I take a somewhat different approach and explore enhancement as a problem in political philosophy and, more specifically, as a problem of distributive justice. Should the enhancement of human intellectual functioning be rejected on distributive grounds of equality? Alternatively, might it be plausibly be argued that distributive justice requires such enhancement? In this paper I shall outline two contemporary theories of justice—namely, the Egalitarianism and the Rawlsian Prioritarianism—and then consider what these principles might tell us about the political legitimacy (or otherwise) of ‘doping for intellect’.
- Subjects :
- Health Policy
Politics
Opposition (politics)
030508 substance abuse
Medicine (miscellaneous)
Philosophy
03 medical and health sciences
Cognition
0302 clinical medicine
Distributive property
Human enhancement
Social Justice
Humans
Intellect
030212 general & internal medicine
Sociology
Political philosophy
0305 other medical science
Distributive justice
Legitimacy
Egalitarianism
Law and economics
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 09553959
- Volume :
- 95
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- International Journal of Drug Policy
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....a18d25b2537d6b88a9285f2f61eea1fa