Assessing the Moral Evaluations of Pharmacological Enhancements

There are a variety of ways to accomplish a goal. But how we choose to accomplish a goal matters, morally speaking. The focus of my dissertation is on the ways in which the use of pharmacological enhancements should affect our moral evaluations. I’m concerned with this central question: how should our decision to enhance or not affect our evaluation of the act or person in question? I discuss a number of moral evaluations including deontic evaluations of human action, which concern assessments of actions being right, wrong, or obligatory; agent evaluations, which include assessments of how we should treat people; these include assessments of moral responsibility and just punishment; and outcome evaluations which include whether or not the completion of a goal is an achievement or not and whether such an achievement is meaningful or hollow (Bradford 2015a). These latter evaluations have received much less attention and one goal in this dissertation is to remedy that gap in the literature. After carefully examining many of the arguments against the use of pharmacological enhancements and casting doubt on them, I conclude that utilizing various pharmacological enhancements is not only permissible in many contexts but may be obligatory in far more cases than has been previously suggested.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Philosophy

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Arts

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Caouette, Justin

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Glannon, Walter

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Fantl, Jeremy
• Migotti, Mark
• Levey, Ann
• Jotterand, Fabrice

Statement dc:rights

• University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.

Language dc:language.iso

en

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/34979

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ucalgary.scholaris.ca:1880/109359