Ethical issues in moral and social enhancement

6.5.
 
Conclusions 
The challenges with translating narrative approaches to identity into strong ethical 
reasons to forgo the biomedical modification of emotions and desires rests on three 
groups of problems. The first problem faced by those approaches lies in providing 
an account of identity that is specifically narrative, but without being so stringent as 
to describe people who seem to have meaningful lives and some stable self-
understanding as fatally lacking in a domain that is supposedly necessary for 
flourishing. Ricoeur’s (1984, 1985, 1988, 1992) account, with his explicit attention 
to the specific features of the narrative, was a good example to examine in this 
context.
The second problem for the narrative identity theorist is accounting for change in 
lives, desires and beliefs and its relation to identity-narrative change. Although 

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Schechtman (2010) proposed that the identity-narratives of DBS patients who 
experience marked personality change fail the articulation constraint, I have argued 
that this is not the case. I think that there are ethical questions raised by the 
possibility of rapidly changing one’s personality, but whatever they might be, they 
are not captured in Schechtman’s (2010) objection to DBS. We are told that 
narratives are flexible but yet can break, but the account is not fleshed out enough 
even to account for what the problem is in cases in which DBS patients clearly 
experience unwanted, serious and rapid personality changes that dramatically 
change their lives and disrupt their social relationships. This means that this 
narrative account of identity is ill-fitted to guide our decisions about biomedically-
induced changes, as is also the case with voluntary MB.
The third problem concerns the value of the narrative identity and its disruptions. 
Even assuming that the psychological narrative thesis is true, i.e., that we all 
construct identity-narratives, doubts can be raised as to the value and importance of 
those narratives and the ethical significance of their disruptions. Some changes that 
can give raise to such disruptions can be a valuable part of human existence and a 
necessary step towards a better state. Some identity narratives might be facilitative 
of wellbeing, while others are detrimental, and a rigid identity-narrative may both 
give meaning and clarity to a diverse mess of life experiences as well as impoverish 
that experience and meaning. Thus, it is unclear whether the goal of maintaining a 
stable identity-narrative would be desirable 
ipso facto
. As a result, it is difficult to 
derive strong action-guiding ethical conclusions from the consideration of narrative 
identity accounts. I therefore conclude that the narrative-identity objection to the 
use of MB is weak, even in cases where the intended or unintended effects of MB 
do not clearly happen within the bounds of the person’s identity. 

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