Health Sciences 2610F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Zero-Sum Game, Coffee Bean, Allen Buchanan
13 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Enhancement of Human Capacities
• Enhancement is an old thing
• Typical moral objections to enhancement
‣cheating/unfairness
‣harm to self, others, the institution
‣intrinsic/extrinsic goods
‣zero sum/non-zero sum
• the future directions: affective enhancement
• Sandel:
‣Therapy has an ethical basis in the relationship between health and “human
flourishing”
‣therapy - someone comes to us who is sick or ill and someone restore the person
back to normal functioning
‣the development of illness is an empediment to happiness
‣famous professor at harvard
‣runs most popular class at Harvard called Justice
‣ “species typical functioning” = normality
- critical
- you are ill when you fall below this
- there is a level of functioning you have and if you fall below it you are ill and
don't fucntion normally
- subjective because for testosterone numbers go from really low to really high
• below the lower number you develop health problems
• everyone gets therapy to boots themselves into a range of normal let
it be high or low normal
‣the purpose of therapy is to restore you to normality (or as close as possible)
Enhancement historically…
• Has always been there
• going beyond the normal functioning
• performance-enhancing drug use
1. predates history
2. was universal
3. seems to serve the same purpose
• ex. coco leaf
‣less oxygen available up in the mountains
‣but if you chew the coco leaf for hours on end you get high and have more energy
• ex. coffee bean
‣was
‣ at large amounts
• ~ Egyptian inscription (2200 BC)
‣thought alcohol enhanced their abilities
‣The mouth of a perfectly contented man is filled with beer.
• The ancient olympics
‣there was doping
‣runners took Fungus (psychedelic mushrooms) so they didn't realize they were
running at al sometimes they used Bread soaked in opium and Alcohol
‣shut down at a point because the connection to greek gods wasn't religious
‣in 1894 they came back and 1904 they came back
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
