The limits of direct modulation of emotion for moral enhancement

Assuming that moral enhancement is morally permissible, I contend that a more careful theoretical treatment of emotion and the affective landscape is needed to advance both our understanding and the prospects of interventions aimed at moral enhancement. Using Douglas' proposal for the direct modulation of counter-moral emotions as a foil for discussion, I argue that the direct modulation of emotion fails to address underlying aspects of an agent's psychology that will give rise to a range of counter-moral motives beyond the emotion that is targeted. This is because the direct modulation of emotion does not accommodate the fact that an emotional episode or emotional disposition is part of a network of other dispositions and responses, against a backdrop of our having cares and goals, as well as other cognitive content that can mediate how we apprehend a situation. By focusing on emotion rather than on moral capacity as other critiques have done, I thus argue that direct modulation is likely to be ineffective, and, more positively, by drawing out patterns of connections across the affective landscape, we can better tease out what it is that we should really be targeting if we are to achieve robust and meaningful moral change.