The Biological Foundations of Bioethics

Abstract

Abstract Much work in bioethics, and also work in mainstream ethics and in political philosophy, is committed to substantive positions regarding the interpretation of biology. Sometimes these commitments are quite obvious, as when ethicists rely on robust notions of species natures to ground their views of enhancement. At other times ethicists espouse more covert positions regarding (for example) proper biological development, ‘species design’, the alleged distinction between the natural and the social, the nature of evolutionary processes, or the causal pre-eminence of genes. This book examines a series of bioethical debates concerning human enhancement, synthetic biology, the ethical significance of species natures, the moral import of evolutionary history, genes and justice, and reproductive ethics, and offer a critical assessment of their biological foundations. It shows how the philosophy of science, and more specifically the philosophy of biology, can illuminate bioethics, political philosophy and ethics more generally.