警惕道德還原論和烏托邦主義的陷阱

Be Wary of the Traps of Moral Reductionism and Utopianism

Abstract

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract in English.

Professor Xu Xiangdong’s paper “Neuroessentialism and the Dilemmas of Moral Bioenhancement” offers a systematic critique of both moral bioenhancement (MBE) and its underlying theory, neuroessentialism. A key insight of the paper is that the validity of an ethical theory hinges on the soundness of its underlying methodology. Neuroessentialism, grounded in reductionism, erroneously reduces human moral understanding and motivation to mere neural activities in the brain. Meanwhile, the MBE initiative, which seeks to improve moral behaviour through biomedical means, is a technologically premature and scientism-driven utopian endeavour that risks eroding human autonomy and the meaning of moral life. A further crucial implication of the paper is that bioethics researchers must steadfastly preserve the field’s philosophical foundations and defend the dignity of human life.