Enhancing Human Capacities

Human enhancement is one of the most exciting - and troubling - areas of recent scientific advance. It raises new and profound challenges relating to the human condition as well as giving rise to serious questions surrounding the limits and ethics of changing human nature. This stimulating volume is the first to review the very latest scientific developments in human enhancement. It is unique in its examination of the ethical and policy implications of these technologies from a broad range of perspectives, including philosophy, the biological and neurosciences, and the social sciences. The audiobook covers all major forms of human enhancement: cognitive, mood, physical, moral and life extension, as well as general conceptual and moral questions about enhancement. Enhancing Human Capacities includes state of the art reviews of the science of enhancement from different perspectives, ethical discussion of key concepts and questions, and concrete policy applications. The audiobook concludes with general discussions of the policy implications of biomedical enhancement in the EU and US contexts. All contributions are by world leading ethicists, neuroscientists and social scientists from Europe and North America.

Julian Savulescu is Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, and Director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics within the Faculty of Philosophy. He is also Director of the Wellcome Centre for Neuroethics, and Director of the Program on the Ethics of the New Biosciences, within the James Martin 21st Century School at the University of Oxford. He is author of over 200 publications and has given over 100 international presentations. Ruud ter Meulen is Chair in Ethics in Medicine, and Director of the Centre for Ethics in Medicine at the University of Bristol. Previously he worked as Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Institute for Bioethics at the University of Maastricht (The Netherlands). He is author of over 130 publications and has given over 100 national and international presentations. He was co–ordinator of the ENHANCE project in which most of the chapters of this audiobook were produced. Guy Kahane is Deputy Director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, and Research Fellow at the Wellcome Centre for Neuroethics, both at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford. Kahane is also Fulford Junior Research Fellow at Somerville College Oxford, and a recipient of a Wellcome Trust University Award in Biomedical Ethics. Kahane has published extensively in applied ethics, metaethics and value theory.