Ethical issues in moral and social enhancement

entirely
inhabited by freedom – insofar as it relates 
to the ability to put our better judgement into practice, that space is also inhabited 
by lack of freedom. Harris recognises the problem of akrasia, yet seems not to see 
emotion modulation as a valuable response and advocates institutional level 
solutions, cognitive enhancement and self-control (‘summoning up the blood’ and 
‘determination’) instead. In previous sections I have outlined why enhancing 

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individual agency via increasing agents’ abilities to deal with akrasia is valuable. In 
the next paragraphs I will consider what I think is a strong reason why cognitive 
enhancement and self-control are not enough.
Recall that according to Aristotle, enkrateia involves having inclinations that are 
not conducive to the good, but doing good nevertheless while exercising self-
control. This involves what I have previously called effective online control. 
However, our ability for effective online control to change the course of action is 
limited. This ability is limited by various constraints, including time constraints 
(many of the decisions for actions are and need to be made quickly), by the 
efficiency trade-offs (even if I had time to reflectively consider whether to give 
money to a panhandler every time, spending two hours giving it deep consideration 
means I am not doing other valuable things), the limited degree to which we can 
exercise self-control over specific desires (for example, a dieting person may be 
able to overcome her craving for chocolate on most but not all occasions, we might 
be able to inhibit acting on a craving for chocolate more than the craving for crisps, 
etc.) and the limited amount self-control resources. For the purpose of this 
argument it is sufficient to consider the latter limitation.
A line of research pursued by Baumeister and colleagues indicates that the type of 
self-control involved in resisting temptation requires effort, and that exerting such 
effort diminishes the ability to resist further temptations. For example, Muraven, 
Tice, and Baumeister (1998) demonstrated that that when a situation demands two 
consecutive acts of self-control, performance on the second act is frequently 
impaired. The impairment is present even if quite different spheres of self-control 
are involved (e.g., an initial act of stifling or amplifying one's emotional response 
led to a subsequent reduction in ability to work through pain and fatigue while 
squeezing a hand grip, and a brief thought suppression task weakened subsequent 
persistence on a task involving solving a puzzle). Such research suggests that many 
widely different forms of self-control draw on a common resource and that such a 
resource might be depleted. Researchers suggest that the metaphor of a muscle well 
describes the effects demonstrated in research on self-control; although repeated 
practice increases the available self-control resources, effort diminishes the 
resources available. 

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The conclusions from Baumeister et al’s (1998) research also apply to moral 
agency. Andrew, the doctor with implicit racist attitudes from Douglas’ paper, 
might in principle be able to control his racist inclinations by noticing when his 
behaviour is impacted and inhibiting acting on them. However, spending his self-
control resources on mitigating this bias means that he cannot allocate his self-
control to other pursuits, including moral deliberation and action. Exercising online 
all-things-considered judgement is a very resource-demanding way of making 
decisions. Similarly, action guidance that relies on self-control is also effortful and 
depletes the scarce self-control resources. Even if acting enkratically is otherwise as 
morally good as acting virtuously, the limited self-control resources mean that we 
would always have strong reasons to adjust fast heuristic processes that give rise to 
inclinations to act (such as habits, and emotions) in a way that is most often aligned 
with moral outcomes. This is not to say that moral review and the ability to adjust 
our actions online is unimportant. Rather, the limited nature of self-control 
resources means that adjusting automatic reactions is a necessary part of effective 
agency.
The point I am making is not philosophically sophisticated. However, if we are 
interested in agents that are able to act according to their assessment of what is 
good and have more cognitive resources to spend on deliberating about the good, 
we have a strong