Performance-Enhancing Technologies and Moral Responsibility in the Military
Authors: Jessica Wolfendale
Journal: The American Journal of Bioethics (2008)

Abstract New scientific advances have created previously unheard of possibilities for enhancing combatants' performance. Future war fighters may be smarter, stronger, and braver than ever before. If these technologies are safe, is there any reason to reject their use? In this article, I argue that the use of enhancements is constrained by the importance of maintaining the moral responsibility of military personnel. This is crucial for two reasons: the military's ethical commitments require military personnel to be morally responsible agents, and moral responsibility is necessary for integrity and the moral emotions of guilt and remorse, both of which are important for moral growth and psychological well-being. Enhancements that undermined combatants' moral responsibility would therefore undermine the military's moral standing and would harm combatants' well-being. A genuine commitment to maintaining the military's ethical standards and the well-being of combatants therefore requires a careful analysis of performance-enhancing technologies before they are implemented. Keywords: enhancementintegritymilitary bioethicsmilitary ethicsmoral emotionsmoral responsibility Notes 1. For an agent to be morally responsible in the sense of responsibility that I will use in this article is for the agent to have the basic capacities and abilities in order to be an appropriate subject for judgments of responsibility. This sense of responsibility is therefore distinct from other common uses of the word, where we might refer to someone having responsibility for a person or persons, being responsible to another person, and bearing legal responsibility. These uses of responsibility would have different conditions than the definition of responsibility to which I am appealing. In relation to theories of moral responsibility, some philosophical positions, such as hard determinism, hold that no one can be held morally responsible for their actions. This issue is beyond the scope of this article. In this article I assume, for the purposes of argument, that people may be held morally responsible for at least some of their actions. 2. This does not necessarily entail that they must have been able to have acted otherwise. According to Harry Frankfurt (2003, 322–336), what matters to responsibility is not whether the agent could have acted otherwise, but whether she was acting in accordance with her second-order desires, the desires that she desired to act on. 3. She is, however, responsible for the death, in the sense of being causally responsible for bringing it about that the child dies. 4. An important difference between excusing an agent and exempting an agent for responsibility for a wrong act is that an excuse tells us that the agent did not in fact do anything wrong (because she was coerced, or was ignorant, or for some other reason), whereas an exemption tells us that a wrong act occurred but that the agent is not a fit subject for attributions of responsibility (CitationWallace 1994, 118). 5. Given the importance of moral responsibility, it is vital that the impact of these technologies on decision-making and moral judgment is assessed during the initial research phases. Once these technologies are implemented, it will be too late. 6. Two United States Air Force pilots charged with causing the deaths of Canadian troops in an friendly fire incident in 2002 argued that the use of amphetamines contributed to their mistake (CitationBower 2003, 19). 7. This would also hold in cases in which an agent on medication for mental illness voluntarily stops taking the medication, with full knowledge that the return of the symptoms of illness will undermine the agent's responsibility. 8. In traditional just war theory, it was believed that military personnel were only responsible for their conduct within war; not for the justness of the cause for which they fought. However, recently this view (known as the doctrine of the moral equality of soldiers (see CitationWalzer 2000) has come under significant criticism, which is beyond the scope of this article (see McMahan 2004), but even if one questions the justification for the moral equality of soldiers, it is generally agreed that, at the very least, military personnel are morally and legally responsible for their conduct within war. 9. I have argued elsewhere that this characterization of military obedience is too lenient on military personnel and is not consistent with the importance of the laws of war to which military forces are committed. The military's moral commitments actually support a far more stringent standard of legal responsibility for war crimes, one that would require military personnel to exercise more deliberation in carrying out their orders (see Wolfendale 2007). 10. It is accepted in a certain limited number of situations. In the Australian Defence Force Discipline Act 1982 for example, “… the “defence of superior orders” is available where: 1. the act or omission was in execution of the law; or 2. was in obedience to a) a lawful order; or b) an unlawful order that the person did not know, and could not reasonably be expected to have known, was unlawful” (CitationWheate and Nial 2003, 20). 11. They might be excused if disobedience carried with it a very serious threat to the combatant's well-being. However, the threat would have to be both imminent and very serious to act as such an excuse. The threat of a possible court-martial and loss of employment does not seem to me to provide such an excuse in cases where war crimes were carried out. Other excusing conditions that might mitigate the degree of combatants' moral responsibility include the extreme group pressure to conform to the military's requirements, training methods that aim to instill instant obedience (CitationGrossman 1995), and serious penalties for disobedience. As Jeff McMahan notes, military training and military culture aims to instill a high degree of obedience in combatants, and while this (and other features of military life) might be important for military functioning, “there is also no question that they [these features] tend to diminish the autonomy and moral responsibility of individuals combatants.” (1994, 206). However, at most these coercive factors might mean that in certain circumstances we excuse the behavior of combatants on the grounds that the coercive pressures were such that it would be unreasonable to expect them to have acted otherwise than they did. The coercive features of the military institution contribute to an explanation of why military personnel obey orders and conform, but they do not demonstrate that the capacities needed for responsible action are undermined in military personnel. 12. This is similar to the common-sense ideal of the good physician, which usually include a set of moral traits (e.g., empathy, benevolence) along with technical skills. For a discussion of the virtues of the good physician, see Oakley and Cocking 2002. 13. Shame and regret have also been called moral emotions. However, as noted by Taylor, neither shame nor regret requires responsibility. We can feel shame about something we are not responsible for, such as our height, and we may feel regret over states of affairs that we have not caused, such as the passing of summer (CitationTaylor 1985, 89). 14. This would provide a reason to be cautious about the development and use in the wider society of performance-enhancing technologies that had this effect. However, as I argue, the effect will be even more serious for military personnel.