Bioenhanced “Virtues” May Threaten Personal Identity

Abstract

Fabiano (2021) argues that virtue theory offers the best “safety framework” for mitigating the risks of moral enhancement. He advances five desiderata for an ideal safety framework and then explains how virtue theory satisfies each. Among these desiderata is the “preservation of identity.” Fabiano argues that moral enhancement can safely preserve personal identity when carried out within the framework of virtue theory. We suggest Fabiano’s argument for this conclusion falls short, since contra Fabiano’s claim, enhancing virtues may not preserve—and could even damage—personal identity. We draw on three sources of evidence: (1) virtue theory scholarship that argues for the importance of habituation for virtue formation, (2) Focquaert and Schermer’s (2015) distinction between active and passive enhancement and attendant endorsement of more active paths to virtue enhancement, and (3) empirical research suggesting that technologies that support moral enhancements may have damaging effects on personal identity. Consider first the importance virtue theory scholarship places on the habituation of virtue. Virtues are typically understood as stable traits of character that dispose their possessors toward the good (Hursthouse and Pettigrove 2018; Aristotle 1999 Nicomachean Ethics Book II, 1106a20). Fabiano acknowledges this, defining virtues as “those traits conducive to the good” and as “general and stable patterns of behavior, thought or emotion” (91). What Fabiano doesn’t recognize, however, is that these traits are typically understood as formed through the process of habituation. As Aristotle explains, “It is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have the prospect of being good” (Nicomachean Ethics Book II, 1105b10). By emphasizing that virtues are formed by repeated choice to perform virtuous action, Aristotle underscores the importance of active, conscious, and long-term engagement on the part of the virtuous agent. Fabiano contends that “a strong connection between virtue and identity is intuitive” (95). However, in skipping over habituation, he fails to consider that this intuitive connection may be a feature of how virtues are acquired. Indeed, while Fabiano draws on empirical evidence showing that “participants assume virtuous behavior is authentic, emanating from someone’s ‘true self,’ and vicious behavior inauthentic” (95), we have good reason to think this perception is in fact grounded in the more basic understanding of virtue formation as a process of habituation. As Molouki and Bartels (2017) suggest, changes in morality create a perceived discontinuity in the self. Importantly, however, there is reduced damage to personal identity when the change is positive, because “people incorporate a trajectory of improvement into their self-concept” (Molouki and Bartels 2017, 13). This accords with the traditional understanding of virtue acquisition but does not map onto virtue acquisition through bioenhancement, which may take place suddenly and/or without active and conscious involvement from the enhanced person. Forming stable traits of character through the gradual and active process of habituation creates a continuity of self that improves over time; it is due to this process that virtues are intuitively connected to personal identity. The intuitions that ground Fabiano’s argument are thus ultimately based in a more foundational framework that undermines his claims about the connection between virtue and identity.