Hofmann Bjørn
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Gjøvik, Norway.
Centre for Medical Ethics, University of Oslo, Blindern, PO Box 1130, N-0318, Oslo, Norway.
BMC Med Ethics. 2017 Oct 10;18(1):56. doi: 10.1186/s12910-017-0215-8.
New technologies facilitate the enhancement of a wide range of human dispositions, capacities, or abilities. While it is argued that we need to set limits to human enhancement, it is unclear where we should find resources to set such limits.
Traditional routes for setting limits, such as referring to nature, the therapy-enhancement distinction, and the health-disease distinction, turn out to have some shortcomings. However, upon closer scrutiny the concept of enhancement is based on vague conceptions of what is to be enhanced. Explaining why it is better to become older, stronger, and more intelligent presupposes a clear conception of goodness, which is seldom provided. In particular, the qualitative better is frequently confused with the quantitative more. We may therefore not need "external" measures for setting its limits - they are available in the concept of enhancement itself. While there may be shortcomings in traditional sources of limit setting to human enhancement, such as nature, therapy, and disease, such approaches may not be necessary. The specification-of-betterment problem inherent in the conception of human enhancement itself provides means to restrict its unwarranted proliferation. We only need to demand clear, sustainable, obtainable goals for enhancement that are based on evidence, and not on lofty speculations, hypes, analogies, or weak associations. Human enhancements that specify what will become better, and provide adequate evidence, are good and should be pursued. Others should not be accepted.
新技术有助于提升人类广泛的性格、能力或才能。虽然有人认为我们需要对人类增强加以限制，但不清楚从何处找到资源来设定这些限制。
设定限制的传统途径，如参照自然、治疗与增强的区分以及健康与疾病的区分，结果都存在一些缺陷。然而，仔细审视会发现，增强的概念基于对要增强之物的模糊概念。解释为何变老、变强和变聪明更好，预先假定了一个清晰的善的概念，而这很少有人提供。特别是，质的更好常常与量的更多相混淆。因此，我们可能不需要“外部”措施来设定其限制——这些限制在增强概念本身中就有。虽然在对人类增强设定限制的传统来源，如自然、治疗和疾病方面可能存在缺陷，但此类方法可能并非必要。人类增强概念本身固有的改善明确问题提供了限制其无节制扩散的手段。我们只需要要求基于证据而非崇高猜测、炒作、类比或薄弱关联的明确、可持续、可实现的增强目标。明确说明什么会变得更好并提供充分证据的人类增强是好的，应该追求。其他的则不应被接受。
