Ethical issues in moral and social enhancement

8.3. Moral control 
8.3.1. Introduction 
Recall that Baron-Cohen (2011) argued that a high level of empathy such as 
‘being continually focused on other people’s feelings ... in a constant state of 
hyperarousal, such that other people are never off their radar,’ is conducive to 
making people good and creating good societies. Those ideas met with 
resistance (for more discussion see: Chapter 3, section 3.3). One of the 
problems highlighted (Bloom, 2011; Harris, 2011, 2012, 2013a, 2013b, 2014a, 
2014b) is that such person’s drive to empathize is unstoppable and does not 
necessarily stem from moral concern. While Bloom argues on practical 
grounds why high levels of empathy do not make for nicer or better people , 
here I am more concerned with the impairment to moral agency – specifically, 
moral control – that aiming to create such individuals may bring.
When we talk about MB as introducing strong pro-social inclinations, we run the 
risk that instead of creating virtuous individuals, we create akratic individuals. In 
the following sections, I will examine the ethicality of biomedical modification of 
inclinations in relation to Aristotle’s account of virtue, enkrateia and akrasia (with 
some revisions). I will first consider inverse-akrasia and, using the example of 
Huckleberry Finn, argue that even in a weak willed action it does matter whether 
the actions flow from reasons that are a part of the agent’s moral worldview. This 
constitutes a strong reason against compulsory MB, but not against voluntary and 

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agent-led biomedical modification. Further, I will argue that although creating 
weak-willed individuals who do good is hardly the ideal moral enhancement 
(understood as making morally better agents), due to limits in our ability for self-
control, a fair deal of 
de facto
automatic action is inevitable in our everyday lives. 
This means that having the inclinations conducive to the good is an important factor 
in enabling us to be good people and effective moral agents. Moreover, even if we 
consider enkratic actions as being as morally good as virtuous ones,
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the limits of 
self-control mean that enkrateia will not suffice – to maximally enhance moral 
agency, we need to aim for virtue. Biomedical emotion modulation, when 
embedded in an appropriate process of reflection, can add to our ways of shaping 
our inclinations so that they more often than not lead us to act consistently with the 
good.