Abstract
Recent debates about the problem of human enhancement eventually have to address the question of personal identity (Schneider, 2008). The aim of this paper is to draw attention to a different aspect of personal identity that has become more important with the rise of experimental approach towards philosophy.
We believe that it should play a crucial role in the enhancement debate, together with obvious metaphysical problems that will not be addressed here. Firstly, various x-phi and psychological studies point to the fact that the folk concept of personal identity is socially determined (Prinz & Nichols, 2016) and that the preservation of the true self of a person stands and falls with the positive moral traits that figure strongly in interpersonal relationships (Strohminger & Nichols, 2014, 2015; Strohminger et al., 2017; Heiphetz et al., 2017, 2018; Tobia, 2015, 2016).
Secondly, despite the general knowledge about the role of the brain, many studies show that people cannot entirely free themselves from dualistic thinking (Berring & Bjorklund, 2004; Bloom, 2004; Mudrik & Maoz, 2015). Both children, adults and even people from certain distant cultures view the brain and the mind as connected to intellectual capacities and perishable in time, while soul is considered a constant entity connected to moral conduct, interpersonality, survival after death, etc. (Richert & Harris, 2006, 2008).
We will introduce our own research to support the previous findings and to show that the "essential moral self" and the concept of soul both capture the same aspect of a person. Our interview study with over 200 children about personal identity supports the "essential moral self" hypothesis - children were considering the changes in moral (interpersonal) category as significantly more prone to break personal identity than changes in all the other categories of traits (memory, cognition, character, perception, physical).
We also performed an online questionnaire study on dualistic intuitions with nearly 3000 adult respondents. The results show that the respondents tended to ascribe to the brain competences connected to intellectual and bodily operations, memory and sense perception, while ascribing significantly lesser role to the brain when it comes to moral, emotional and deeply interpersonal competences and preservation of personal identity.
In the case of the soul, the pattern was exactly the opposite. Based on these studies we can conclude that the "essential moral self" shares certain crucial characteristics with the folk concept of the soul: both concepts are closely connected to moral and interpersonal traits, they are both seen as facilitating the preservation of personal identity, and physical or purely intellectual traits are not usually associated with them.
When it comes to the debates about the future of the human nature, physical or intellectual enhancements might be less problematic than moral or emotional ones. Considering the intuitions of people living today and what they care for the most, we should strive to see all the possible enhancements through their ability to preserve or disrupt the "soul" - the aspect of a person capable of moral conduct and deep interpersonal relationships with others.