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However, sincerity is a necessary condition of authenticity because an authentic emotion must be psychologically real even if it need not emerge spontaneously, Moreover, authenticity is a regulative and open-ended ideal as our spontaneous emotions frequently challenge the coherence of our present emotions, values, and beliefs. In this view, authenticity is analyzed as coherence between the emotion and one's internally justified values and beliefs. As an alternative, I shall put forward an 'integrity view' of emotional authenticity. These anomalies reflect a general problem in the 'sincerity view': sincerity is a psychological concept, whereas authenticity is a normative notion. Nevertheless, I shall provide reasons for rejecting this view, since it passes unintuitive verdicts on the authenticity of two significant emotional phenomena: recalcitrant emotions and managed emotions. There is a common view in contemporary philosophy, psychology, sociology, and gender studies that associates emotional authenticity with spontaneity and sincerity. It is concluded that with the advent of new technologies and the increasing importance of optimal mental functioning in modern societies, these issues will remain important in the near future, even if they may no longer be grouped together under the heading of “mood enhancement.” Finally, there are questions about the proper role of medicine and the critique on the medicalization of psychological states and traits and the role of industry. Secondly, issues regarding authenticity, identity, and the proper view of and attitude towards the self are discussed. These include, first, the nature and value of happiness and human well-being. This contribution gives an overview of the mood-enhancement discussion as it has played out in the academic literature over the last 20 years.Īfter a brief historical overview of mood enhancement and the associated ethical debate, the most important ethical and philosophical issues regarding mood enhancement are addressed in more detail. These questions are partly in line with questions known from the broader debate on human enhancement and partly relate to the ways in which neuroscience and neurotechnologies are affecting our ideas about who we are and how we should understand ourselves. Pharmacological mood enhancement – the improvement of mood and related mental functions by means of pharmaceuticals – raises a number of philosophical, ethical, and social questions. These findings have implications for the concept's efficacy to adjudicate the complex ethical conundrums posed, not only by transhumanism, but in the bioethics arena in general. In addition, I discuss the counter-argument of the transhumanist Nick Bostrom.
In this paper, I briefly discuss the aims of the transhumanist movement and explicate the concept of human dignity in order to assess one of the most renowned dignity arguments that has been lodged against transhumanism, namely, the argument of the bioconservative thinker Leon Kass. Criticisms include its ambiguous nature and thus the lack of adequate definition by those who utilise it, its supposedly religious undertones as well as the fact that it may be used to argue for diametrically opposing positions within the same argument, due to the existence of distinct and conflicting interpretations. The efficacy of the concept of human dignity has itself, however, been questioned. In this regard, transhumanism is frequently described as an affront to human dignity in a manner that appears to be aimed at halting the possibility of further debate. In particular, the notion has been utilised in arguments that seek to constrain a variety of biotechnological endeavours, examples of which include human cloning and transhumanism. In recent decades, recourse to notions of human dignity has increased extensively within the field of bioethics.