Jonathan Glover - What Sort of People Should There Be? (1984)

Book Description

This was the first philosophical book on the ethics of genetic choices, and (in its second half) the first book on what is now called “neuroethics”: questions about mood-changing drugs, about inhabiting virtual realities, and about the use of brain-scanning techniques to access the contents of people’s minds. "This book is about some questions to do with the future of mankind. The questions have been selected on two grounds. They arise out of scientific developments whose beginnings we can already see, such as genetic engineering and behaviour control. And they involve fundamental values: these technologies may change the central framework of human life. The book is intended as a contribution, not to prediction, but to a discussion of what sort of future we should try to bring about... The intention is to describe possibilities in ways that separate out different values, and to say, "these values, rather than those, are what matter, aren't they?" Of course, in a way I hope for the answer "yes". But, because people have different outlooks, the answer will quite often be "no". My hope is that those who answer "no" will have been helped to see more clearly what it is they do not believe, and perhaps as a result to work out more fully what they do believe." 

(Jonathan Glover)

 

Chapters 

 

Chapter 1 Introduction
1. The Questions
2. The Approach
Part One: Genes

Chapter 2 Questions about Some Uses of Genetic Eogineeling
1. Avoiding the Debate about Genes and the Environment
2. Methods of Changing the Genetic Composition of Future
Generations
3. The PositineNegative Dishnction
4. The View That Overall Improvement is Unllkeiy or Impossible
5. The Pamily and Our Descendants
6. Cloning
7. Crossing Species Baundaries
8. Risks and Mistakes
9. The Objections So Par

Chapter 3 Decisions
1. Not Playing God
2. The Genetic Supermarket
3. AMixedSystem
4. Values
5. Changing Human Nature 

Part Two: Thought Experiments

 
Chapter 4 Transparency
1. Monitoring Thoughts
2. Transparency in a Pree Community 

3. Relationships
4. Identity and Individuality
5. The Two Perspectives 

Chapter 5 Mood
1. The Objection to Social Quietism
2. Appropriateness
3. The Superdrug
Chapter 6 Control
1. Some Questions
2. Abuse by the Authorities
3. Benevolent Control by the Authorities
4. Voluntary Submission to Democratically Programmed Control
5. A Closed Society
6. Identity
7. Self-ModEccation
8. Conclusions 

Chapter 7 Dreams ( I )
1. The Experience Machine
2. Some Primitive Objections
3. Internal and External Perspectives
4. Other People
5. Activity
6. Identity Objectibns
7. TheKantian Objection
8. Will It SNI Be MC?
9. Personal Characteristics 

Chapter 8 Dreams (11)
1. The Dreamworld
2. Is thehamworld Real?
3. Deception. and What We Want
4. The Objection That the Dreamworld is Mind-Centred
5. The Mind-Dependence View
6. Claustrophobia

Chapter 9 Work
1. Cooperation and Expression
2. The Journey, Not the Anival
3. ResultsandReplacement
4. Circles 

5. NegativeCircles 

6. System
7. Transcending the Bcanomic Problem
2. Contact & variety
3. The Development of Consciousness
4. Beyond Consewatism about Human Nature
 

Part Three: Values

 
Chapter 11 Generations
1. StahandHenen
2. The Quality Principle
3. Some Views Incompatible with the Equalitg Principle
4. Practical Cons'aints on the Equality Principle
5. AgainstUtapias
6. In Defence of Interoention
7. A Possible Cadet 

Chapter 12 Adjustment
1. Quality adth e Satisfaction of Desires
2. Autonomy
3. Neutrality
4. The Human Zoo 

Chapter 13 Perspectives
1. lixternal Perspectives
2. Quality
3. Bias
4. Archimedes and Neurath 

Chapter 14 Some Conclusions
1. Transcending Intellectual Limitations
2. Emotional andImaginative Urnitations
3. Values and Dangers
4. Consciousness