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Moral Enhancement and Climate Change: Might it Work?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 October 2018

Aleksandra Kulawska  and
Michael Hauskeller
Aleksandra Kulawska*
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
Michael Hauskeller*
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
*
[email protected]
[email protected]
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Abstract

Climate change is one of the most urgent global problems that we face today. The causes are well understood and many solutions have been proposed; however, so far none have been successful. Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu have argued that this is because our moral psychology is ill-equipped to deal with global problems such as this. They propose that in order to successfully mitigate climate change we should morally enhance ourselves. In this chapter we look at their proposal to see whether moral enhancement is indeed a viable solution to the climate crisis, and conclude that due to various theoretical and practical problems it most likely is not.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 83: Moral Enhancement: Critical Perspectives , October 2018 , pp. 371 - 388
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2018 

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