Preference adaptation and human enhancement: Reflections on autonomy and well-being

Abstract

In Huxley’s well-known novel Brave New World people are engineered in such a way that they cannot help but wanting the things they have, and aspiring the social positions they are in fact designed to hold. In a sense, one could call this a form of human enhancement – the people in this Brave New World are all very content and happy. However, as the novel and the above quotation make tangible: wanting only those things you can have may make the world more stable and individuals happier, but it also makes people lose an important part of their humanness. What they may gain in happiness, they lose in self-determination and autonomy.