Bioscience and the good life / Iain Brassington.

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Title Page; Copyright Page; Contents; Acknowledgements; Chapter 1 The Good of Bioscience; Understanding the good life; Happiness and flourishing; The importance of projects; Function and the good life; The reasonable expectation standard; Rebooting the therapy/enhancement distinction; Closing the distinction?; The structure of this book; Notes; Chapter 2 Bad Arguments against Better Lives; Repugnance as a moral tool; Nature and human nature; Habermas' future; The argument from dignity; A slight reprieve?; The mythologization of the given; Is enhancement permissible?; Notes.

Chapter 3 Must We Make Better People?John Harris' argument for a duty to enhance; Harris' argument; Why would enhancement be a duty?; Beneficence and duties to enhance; What is enhancement?; What is 'acceptable'?; A duty to enhance?; Notes; Chapter 4 Sex, Death and Cabbages: A Defence of Mortality; Defending against death; Avoiding deaths and saving lives; What's wrong with mortality ; Why not be immortal?; Self-inflicted boredom?; Filling a life, and the LOT revisited; Mortality and the good life; The boon of mortality; Notes; Chapter 5 Designs for Life; Enhancement in sport.

The character of the sportBecoming a blade-runner; On me, not in me; Other objections; Body modification and the good life; Notes; Chapter 6 Thinking Better about Better Thinking; Enhancing memory; Out of our heads; Criminal detection: A duty to remember?; Memory and absentmindedness; Enhancing processing; The argument from alienation; The social benefits of cognitive enhancement; The benefits of distraction; Alienation revisited; The case for cognitive enhancement: Not wholly proven; Notes; Chapter 7 Good Is as Good Does? The Case of 'Moral Enhancement'

The possibility of 'moral enhancement'Strategies for moral enhancement; The argument from freedom; Freedom and options; Nicomachean moral enhancement; Rebuilding the argument from freedom; The argument from reasonable disagreement; Enhancing moral reasoning; Is moral enhancement desirable anyway?; Notes; Chapter 8 Bioscience and the Duty to Research, Part 1: Ways to Make Life Better; Is there a duty of beneficence?; Beneficence, benefit and obligation; What would be beneficial research?; The argument from incommensurability; The argument from anthropology; Ecology and economy.

Is there a duty to research?Notes; Chapter 9 Bioscience and the Duty to Research, Part 2: Non-Beneficent Arguments; Formulating the duty to research; The prevention and causation argument; The argument from rescue; The argument from filial piety; The free rider argument; Fairness and the future; Reason and obligation; A puzzle about duties; Notes; 9-and-a-bit Bioscience and the Good Life; Note; Bibliography; Index.

The field of biotechnology has provided us with radical revisions and reappraisals of the nature and possibilities of our biological existence. Yet beyond its immediate utility, does a life healthier, longer, or freer from disease make us.

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