"Moral bioenhancement, nudge-designed environments, and ambient persuasive technologies may help people behave more consistently with their deeply held moral convictions..."

Sci Eng Ethics. 2019 Mar 21. doi: 10.1007/s11948-019-00099-y. [Epub ahead of print]

What Do We Have to Lose? Offloading Through Moral Technologies: Moral Struggle and Progress.

Frank LE1.

Author information

1

Department of Philosophy and Ethics, School of Innovation Science, Technical University of Eindhoven, 5612 AZ, Eindhoven, The Netherlands. L.e.frank@tue.nl.

Abstract

Moral bioenhancement, nudge-designed environments, and ambient persuasive technologies may help people behave more consistently with their deeply held moral convictions. Alternatively, they may aid people in overcoming cognitive and affective limitations that prevent them from appreciating a situation's moral dimensions. Or they may simply make it easier for them to make the morally right choice by helping them to overcome sources of weakness of will. This paper makes two assumptions. First, technologies to improve people's moral capacities are realizable. Second, such technologies will actually help people get morality right and behave more consistently with whatever the 'real' right thing to do turns out to be. The paper then considers whether or not humanity loses anything valuable, particularly opportunities for moral progress, when being moral is made much easier by eliminating difficult moral deliberation and internal moral struggle. Ultimately, the worry that moral struggle has value as a catalyst for moral progress is rejected. Moral progress is understood here as the discovery and application of new values or sensitization to new sources of harm.