Neurobiology and the Good: Is It Possible to Make a Person Moral?

Abstract

With the discovery of the possibility of neurobiologically and genetically interpreting the actions of a moral agent, the issue of the status of morality returned to applied ethics with renewed vigor. The biotechnological understanding of society as a whole has been a long-running trend in technoscience and can be considered as a transgression of (bio-) technologies into the sphere of ethics. The essence of the conflict between bio-conservative ethics and techno-oriented utilitarians lies in the plane of violation of the fundamental value of autonomy (J. Harris) and the destruction of the principle of solidarity and equality (A. Buchanan). Supporters of techno-determined moral action as conditions for the expansion of technology into the field of morality put forward the predictability of consequences as a condition for the legitimation of technology (N. Agar), the need to prevent maximum harm (J. Savulescu, I. Persson) and the right to an autonomous choice of a biotechnological regulation of morality (V. Rakic). At the center of the discussion is the problem of the good, for the practical solution of which moral outsourcing mechanisms have already been envisaged (e.g. the service of triage officers in disaster medicine, extended informed consent for biobanks). The article compares moral action as a choice, moral action as a coercion and moral action as outsourcing, and determines the place of the neurobiological interpretation of good and moral action within the theoretical understanding of a moral act in applied ethics. In particular, the role of a cognitive act in the context of a moral act is examined, the problem of deferred risks and their regulation when making a moral decision is analyzed. It is concluded that one of the manifestations of the impact of (bio) technology on a person is the complicacy and transformation of moral decision-making models, in connection with which the universal methods that formulate a moral action (moral act as a choice) can be supplemented by new models that constitute good and moral action.