Theories of Justice Applied to Human Enhancement

Julia Sichieri Moura (Federal University of Parana); Charles Feldhaus (State University of Londrina); Murilo Vilaça (Oswaldo Cruz Foundation) 

Arthur Lewis Building: Room 3.040

A main topic in political philosophy are the often conflicting conceptions of justice, the metric and the criteria of distributive justice. In the proposed panel, we aim to apply the theoretical discussion on justice to a practical question that dominates the contemporary practical debate: can accelerated scientific and technological advance be combined with the promotion of fairness in societies or will it produce even more serious social inequities? Our focus on the relationship between techno-scientific progress and justice is specific. We are interested in promoting a debate on a prominent topic in the debate in applied philosophy: Human Enhancement. Our aim is to bring together researchers whose research focus is on theories of justice and, in addition, who take the topic of Human Enhancement as a research object.

In this sense, we welcome applications of proposals that approach Human Enhancement as an idea of promoting changes in the human condition, considering its social implications positive and/or negative in terms of justice. In addition to a generic approach on the topic, applications of specific approaches will be very welcome. That is, we encourage proposals that address:

• Implications of specific modalities of Human Enhancement: moral, affective, cognitive, physical, cosmetic or longevity.
• Type of technique used: biomedical/pharmaceutical, machine-based/AI or genetic.
• Type of application/social domain involved: recreational, educational, workplace, military or healthcare, which may involve case studies.
• Approaches that work with the results of the SIENNA Project.