Oh, I completely agree there’s no such line, and given that I am a dedicated non-essentialist, I have no attachment to the necessity of drawing any such line.

But if there’s no such line, I do think it means we need to think carefully about what “enhancement” actually means. In some sense, I think the term as a referent for a constellation of ethical problems is unhelpful and obscurantist, partly because it is unclear what is problematic about “enhancement” if in fact what constitutes enhancement might well be therapeutic for any given person or persons.

So, I completely agree that the Platonic question is (as always) the important one. I just think scholars who work in these areas might generally find it more fruitful to engage what seems problematic about, e.g., medicalization of social problems without invoking the notion of enhancement (this is not intended as a not-so-veiled jab at you, BTW).

Daniel, I think my next post on this will be “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Loathe the Therapy/Enhancement Distinction.” I’m beginning to think that there’s no way for theorists to convincingly draw a theoretical line between the two, and I’m beginning to doubt the utility of such a line. Aren’t the real questions here normative inquiries, such as “What is the good life” and “Does a particular intervention help or hinder our attaining it?”

If the term “good life” seems to normatively loaded, I urge readers to substitute for it their own preferred formulations–”right conduct in light of natural reason,” “maximum utility,” “functionings,” “capabilities,” etc.

Also, Frank, we’ve discussed this before, but I continue to think it is necessary to engage the epistemic problem of distinguishing enhancement from therapy.

Thanks for the acknowledgment and link. In addition, the following titles should help readers unfamiliar with recent literature on some of the subects you raise here:

Bolton, Derek and Jonathan Hill. Mind, Meaning, and Mental Disorder: The Nature of Causal Explanation in Psychology and Psychiatry (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003)

Brody, Howard. Hooked: Ethics, the Medical Profession, and the Pharmaceutical Industry (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007)

Buchanan, David R. An Ethic for Health Promotion: Rethinking the Sources of Human Well-Being (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000)

Healy, David. The Creation of Psychopharmacology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002)

Ghaemi, S. Nassir. The Concepts of Psychiatry: A Pluralistic Approach to the Mind and Mental Illness (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003)

Sadler, John Z., ed. Descriptions and Prescriptions: Values, Mental Disorders, and the DSMs (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002)