Andart

Love (enhancement paper) is here!

Brian D. Earp, Anders Sandberg and Julian Savulescu, Natural Selection, Childrearing, and the Ethics of Marriage (and Divorce): Building a Case for the Neuroenhancement of Human Relationships, Philosophy & Technology, 2012, DOI: 10.1007/s13347-012-0081-8

Yes, our new paper on the neuroenahancement of love (for the sake of the children) is online and open access.

We argue that the fragility of contemporary marriages—and the corresponding high rates of divorce—can be explained (in large part) by a threepart mismatch: between our relationship values, our evolved psychobiological natures, and our modern social, physical, and technological environment. “Love drugs” could help address this mismatch by boosting our psychobiologies while keeping our values and our environment intact. While individual couples should be free to use pharmacological interventions to sustain and improve their romantic connection, we suggest that they may have an obligation to do so as well, in certain cases. Specifically, we argue that couples with offspring may have a special responsibility to enhance their relationships for the sake of their children. We outline an evolutionarily informed research program for identifying promising biomedical enhancements of love and commitment.

Posted by Anders3 at July 8, 2012 09:32 AM