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categories: ["society", "enhancement"]categories: ["society", "enhancement"]tags: ["autonomy", "rights", "bodily integrity", "enhancement", "law", "ethics"]tags: ["autonomy", "rights", "bodily integrity", "enhancement", "law", "ethics"]summary: "The claimed right to modify one's own body and mind as one chooses, and the correlative right to refuse modification imposed by others."summary: "The claimed right to modify one's own body and mind as one chooses, and the correlative right to refuse modification imposed by others."updated: "2026-07-27"updated: "2026-08-23"issues: ["Habermas, Carl Elliott and the feminist critique are discussed without citations."]issues: ["Habermas, Carl Elliott and the feminist critique are discussed without citations."]------ lines 79–84 → 79–9465 unchanged lines not shown
A second criticism holds that the principle is empty without a theory of what is worth wanting. Bioconservative writers argue that morphological freedom describes a procedure while remaining silent on whether any given transformation is good for the person, and that a framework with nothing to say about that has abandoned the question that matters; see [[bioconservatism]] and [[leon-kass]].A second criticism holds that the principle is empty without a theory of what is worth wanting. Bioconservative writers argue that morphological freedom describes a procedure while remaining silent on whether any given transformation is good for the person, and that a framework with nothing to say about that has abandoned the question that matters; see [[bioconservatism]] and [[leon-kass]]. > [!debate] An objection consent cannot answer> The sharpest bioconservative statement does not contest the autonomy argument — it denies its> relevance. Michael Sandel argues that the vocabulary of autonomy and rights is "ill equipped" for> enhancement precisely because it "cannot explain our moral hesitation about people who seek> genetic remedies or enhancements for themselves"; his objection is to the "drive to mastery" a> choice expresses, not to who makes it.[^sandel2004] Against Sandberg's claim that the decision> belongs to the person in the body, Sandel's reply is that the decision's location was never the> question. That is a disagreement about whether consent exhausts the ethics, and no refinement of> consent procedures can address it. A third comes from disability studies. Body integrity dysphoria, recognised in the ICD-11, describes people who seek amputation or paralysis of healthy limbs. Advocates of morphological freedom face a dilemma: refusing these requests requires appeal to a norm of function that the principle was designed to reject, while granting them requires accepting elective disability as a legitimate exercise of the same right. The debate in [[disability-rights-and-enhancement]] approaches the same territory from the other direction, and neither side has produced a criterion that handles both cases without special pleading.A third comes from disability studies. Body integrity dysphoria, recognised in the ICD-11, describes people who seek amputation or paralysis of healthy limbs. Advocates of morphological freedom face a dilemma: refusing these requests requires appeal to a norm of function that the principle was designed to reject, while granting them requires accepting elective disability as a legitimate exercise of the same right. The debate in [[disability-rights-and-enhancement]] approaches the same territory from the other direction, and neither side has produced a criterion that handles both cases without special pleading. ## Current relevance## Current relevancelines 104–107 → 114–11819 unchanged lines not shown
[^sandberg2001]: `book` Sandberg, A. "Morphological Freedom — Why We Not Just Want It, but Need It." Presented at TransVision, 2001; reprinted in *The Transhumanist Reader*, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.[^sandberg2001]: `book` Sandberg, A. "Morphological Freedom — Why We Not Just Want It, but Need It." Presented at TransVision, 2001; reprinted in *The Transhumanist Reader*, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.[^bostrom2005]: `paper` Bostrom, N. "In Defense of Posthuman Dignity." *Bioethics*, 2005.[^bostrom2005]: `paper` Bostrom, N. "In Defense of Posthuman Dignity." *Bioethics*, 2005.[^rvbm2018]: `law` *R v BM* [2018] EWCA Crim 560, Court of Appeal of England and Wales. {A criminal appeal binding only in England and Wales; the operator was a body-modification practitioner, and the ruling turns on that rather than on what the customers wanted.}[^rvbm2018]: `law` *R v BM* [2018] EWCA Crim 560, Court of Appeal of England and Wales. {A criminal appeal binding only in England and Wales; the operator was a body-modification practitioner, and the ruling turns on that rather than on what the customers wanted.}[^sandel2004]: `news` Sandel, M. J. "The Case Against Perfection." *The Atlantic Monthly*, April 2004. {A magazine essay, expanded into a 2007 book of the same name; its worked examples are genetic enhancement, sport and hyperparenting rather than body modification generally.} removed, struck through added, underlinedLine numbers count the serialised markdown of each revision, frontmatter included.
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