Eliminating Status Quo Bias In Applied Ethics

The Reversal Test: Eliminating Status Quo Bias in Applied Ethics
I. INTRODUCTION Suppose that we develop a medically safe and affordable means of enhancing human intelligence. For concreteness, we shall assume that the technology is genetic engineering (either somatic or germ line), although the argument we will present does not depend on the technological implementation. For simplicity, weshall speak of enhancing “intelligence” or “cognitive capacity,” but we do not presuppose that intelligence is best conceived of as a unitary attribute. Our considerations could be applied to specific cognitive abilities such as verbal fluency, memory, abstract reasoning, social intelligence, spatial cognition, numerical ability, or musical talent. It will emerge that the form of argument that we usecan be applied much more generally to help assess other kinds of enhancement technologies as well as other kinds of reform. However, to give a detailed illustration of how the argument form works, we will focus on the prospect of cognitive enhancement. Many ethical questions could be asked with regard to this prospect, but we shall address only one: do we have reason to believe that the long-termconsequences of human cognitive enhancement would be, on balance, good? This may not be the only morally relevant question—

* For comments, we are grateful to Daniel Brock, David Calverley, Arthur Caplan, Jonathan Glover, Robin Hanson, Michael Sandel, Julian Savulescu, Peter Singer, Mark Walker, and to the participants of the “Methods in Applied Ethics” seminar at Oxford, the “How Can HumanNature Be Ethically Improved” conference in New York, the “Sport Medicine Ethics” conference in Stockholm, and the Oxford-Scandinavia Ethics Summit, where earlier versions of this article were presented. We are also grateful for the helpful comments from two anonymous referees and six anonymous members of the editorial board. Ethics 116 (July 2006): 656–679 2006 by The University of Chicago. All rightsreserved. 0014-1704/2006/116040003$10.00

656

Bostrom and Ord

Reversal Test

657

we leave open the possibility of deontological constraints—but it is certainly of great importance to any ethical decision making.1 It is impossible to know what the long-term consequences of such an intervention would be. For simplicity, we may assume that the immediate biological effects arerelatively well understood, so that the intervention can be regarded as medically safe. There would remain great uncertainty about the long-term direct and indirect consequences, including social, cultural, and political ramifications. Furthermore, even if (per impossibile) we knew what all the consequences would be, it might still be difficult to know whether they are on balance good. When assessing theconsequences of cognitive enhancement, we thus face a double epistemic predicament: radical uncertainty about both prediction and evaluation. This double predicament is not unique to cases involving cognitive enhancement or even human modification. It is part and parcel of the human condition. It arises in practically every important deliberation, in individual decision making as well as socialpolicy. When we decide to marry or to back some major social reform, we are not—or at least we shouldn’t be—under any illusion that there exists some scientifically rigorous method of determining the odds that the long-term consequences of our decision will be a net good. Human lives and social systems are simply too unpredictable for this to be possible. Nevertheless, some personal decisions and somesocial policies are wiser and better motivated than others. The simple point here is that our judgments about such matters are not based exclusively on hard evidence or rigorous statistical inference but rely also—crucially and unavoidably—on subjective, intuitive judgment. The quality of such intuitive judgments depends partly on how well informed they are about the relevant facts. Yet other...