Cohen’s Conservatism and Human Enhancement
نویسندگان
چکیده
In an intriguing essay, G. A. Cohen has defended a conservative bias in favour of existing value. In this paper, we consider whether Cohen's conservatism raises a new challenge to the use of human enhancement technologies. We develop some of Cohen's suggestive remarks into a new line of argument against human enhancement that, we believe, is in several ways superior to existing objections. However, we shall argue that on closer inspection, Cohen's conservatism fails to offer grounds for a strong sweeping objection to enhancement, and may even offer positive support for forms of enhancement that preserve valuable features of human beings. Nevertheless, we concede that Cohen's arguments may suggest some plausible and important constraints on the modality of legitimate and desirable enhancements.
منابع مشابه
A Performance-Correctness Explicitly-Decoupled Architecture: Technical Report
Optimizing the common case has been an adage in decades of processor design practices. However, as the system complexity and optimization techniques’ sophistication have increased substantially, maintaining correctness under all situations, however unlikely, is contributing to the necessity of extra conservatism in all layers of the system design. The mounting process, voltage, and temperature ...
متن کاملAn Investigation of Relationship between Earnings Conservatism and Price to Book Ratio Based on Basu’s Method
One of the most important concepts in financial statement analysis and evaluation is conservatism. Thus recognition of the factors which influence conservatism can considerably help the investor in managing the selection of more conservative assets properly and avoiding the untrue exposure of financial statements. This research is about to consider the relation of effective factors on organizat...
متن کاملThe Role of Environmental Uncertainty, Financial Constraints and Accounting Conservatism in Limiting the Performance Outcomes Due to Manager Overconfidence
Objective: The excessive self-esteem of managers leads to postponing bad news due to weaknesses in performance, and conservatism can be a factor in modifying it. In this paper, the purpose is to examine the role of accounting conservatism in limiting the functional outcomes results from overconfidence managers. Methods: The data of the companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange for the peri...
متن کاملUncertainty and Conservatism in Safety Evaluations Based on a BEPU Approach
Atomic Energy Society of Japan has published “Standard Method for Safety Evaluation using Best Estimate Code Based on Uncertainty and Scaling Analyses with Statistical Approach” to be applied to accidents and AOOs in the safety evaluation of LWRs. In this method, hereafter named as the AESJ-SSE (Statistical Safety Evaluation) method, identification and quantification of uncertainties will be pe...
متن کاملAn evaluative conservative case for biomedical enhancement.
It is widely believed that a conservative moral outlook is opposed to biomedical forms of human enhancement. In this paper, I argue that this widespread belief is incorrect. Using Cohen's evaluative conservatism as my starting point, I argue that there are strong conservative reasons to prioritise the development of biomedical enhancements. In particular, I suggest that biomedical enhancement m...
متن کامل