Visions and Ethics in Current Discourse on Human Enhancement

Since it is now broadly acknowledged that ethics should receive early consideration in discourse on emerging technologies, ethical debates tend to flourish even while new fields of technology are still in their infancy. Such debates often liberally mix existing applications with technologies in the pipeline and far-reaching visions. This paper analyses the problems associated with this use of ethics as “preparatory” research, taking discourse on human enhancement in general and on pharmaceutical cognitive enhancement in particular as an example. The paper will outline and discuss the gap between the scientific and technological state of the art and the ethical debates, pointing out epistemic problems in this context. Furthermore, it will discuss the future role of genuine ethical reflection in discourse on human enhancement, arguing also that such discourse needs to include a technology assessment—in the broad sense of the term—which encompasses, inter alia, anthropological perspectives and aspects of social theory.     

Negotiating Plausibility: Intervening in the Future of Nanotechnology

The national-level scenarios project NanoFutures focuses on the social, political, economic, and ethical implications of nanotechnology, and is initiated by the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University (CNS-ASU). The project involves novel methods for the development of plausible visions of nanotechnology-enabled futures, elucidates public preferences for various alternatives, and, using such preferences, helps refine future visions for research and outreach. In doing so, the NanoFutures project aims to address a central question: how to deliberate the social implications of an emergent technology whose outcomes are not known. The solution pursued by the NanoFutures project is twofold. First, NanoFutures limits speculation about the technology to plausible visions. This ambition introduces a host of concerns about the limits of prediction, the nature of plausibility, and how to establish plausibility. Second, it subjects these visions to democratic assessment by a range of stakeholders, thus raising methodological questions as to who are relevant stakeholders and how to activate different communities so as to engage the far future. This article makes the dilemmas posed by decisions about such methodological issues transparent and therefore articulates the role of plausibility in anticipatory governance.     

The moral behavior of ethics professors: A replication-extension in German-speaking countries

What is the relation between ethical reflection and moral behavior? Does professional reflection on ethical issues positively impact moral behaviors? To address these questions, Schwitzgebel and Rust empirically investigated if philosophy professors engaged with ethics on a professional basis behave any morally better or, at least, more consistently with their expressed values than do non-ethicist professors. Findings from their original US-based sample indicated that neither is the case, suggesting that there is no positive influence of ethical reflection on moral action. In the study at hand, we attempted to cross-validate this pattern of results in the German-speaking countries and surveyed 417 professors using a replication-extension research design. Our results indicate a successful replication of the original effect that ethicists do not behave any morally better compared to other academics across the vast majority of normative issues. Yet, unlike the original study, we found mixed results on normative attitudes generally. On some issues, ethicists and philosophers even expressed more lenient attitudes. However, one issue on which ethicists not only held stronger normative attitudes but also reported better corresponding moral behaviors was vegetarianism.     

Baiting bioethics

Various criticisms of bioethics are reported and evaluated in an effort to determine what it is reasonable to expect of this rapidly developing field and what should be its future directions. Specific charges by Renée Fox, Judith Swazey, and William Bennett are explored. Fox and Swazey contend that bioethics champions individualism and pays little attention to social relationships, that bioethicists distance themselves from the human settings where ethical issues are experienced, and that bioethics pretends to a false validity. Bennett indicts bioethics on the grounds that it promotes ethical relativism and moral indifference. Gorovitz argues the case against these contentions but urges ethicists systematically to assess their critics' statements.     

Instrumentalist Interpretations of Hindu Environmental Ethics

Many environmental ethicists believe that any adequate environmental ethic should attribute ‘direct moral standing’ (often glossed in terms of intrinsic value) to plants, animals, and the rest of nature. But certain interpretations of Hindu environmental ethics apparently attribute only instrumental value to nature. This places them in direct conflict with the purported adequacy condition on an environmental ethic. So, is such a Hindu ethical view really inadequate? In his recent book Hinduism and Environmental Ethics, Christopher Framarin claims that it is because Hindu instrumentalism about nature is either viciously circular or unacceptably arbitrary. I argue, however, that Framarin’s claim founders in virtue of his misconstruing the logical structure of instrumental value.     

The Body Image Boundary Construct: A Reply to Fisher and Cleveland

The ability of expert and naive judges to discriminate between genuine and Barnum assessment statements was assessed. In a 2 x 2 x 2 design (naive vs. expert judges, genuine vs. Barnum test statements, sex), judges rated assessment statements for their information value, usefulness, social desirability, and typicalness. Results indicated that judges were able to make expected discriminations between genuine and Barnum statements. These results were discussed in terms of previous findings which have suggested that judges have seen Barnum statements as "accurate" or "good" as genuine statements. In the present study, the discriminations seemed due to the use of a population of judges more representative of clinical assessment consumers and to the more specific judgments required.     

A study of the foundations of ethical decision making of clinical medical ethicists

A study of clinical medical ethicists was conducted to determine the various philosophical positions they hold with respect to ethical decision making in medicine and their various positions' relationship to the subjective-objective controversy in value theory. The study consisted of analyzing and interpreting data gathered from questionnaires from 52 clinical medical ethicists at 28 major health care centers in the United States. The study revealed that most clinical medical ethicists tend to be objectivists in value theory, i.e., believe that value judgments are knowledge claims capable of being true or false and therefore expressions of moral requirements and normative imperatives emanating from an external value structure or moral order in the world. In addition, the study revealed that most clinical medical ethicists are consistent in the philosophical foundations of their ethical decision making, i.e., in decision making regarding values they tend not to hold beliefs which are incompatible with other beliefs they hold about values.     

Why physicians should not do ethics consults

Increasing complexities facing physicians negotiating the bedside decision continue to fuel the debate over who is the appropriate party to offer ethics consults, should one be needed, during the decision-making process. Some very good arguments have been put forth on behalf of clinical ethicists as being the proper and best party to engage in ethics consultations. However, serious questions remain about the role of the clinical ethicist and his ability to provide the necessary level of objectivity called for in an ethics consult. I argue that the clinician's professional psyche, or mode of thinking as a professional, leaves him little room to maneuver as an objective and detached third party ethics consultant. Several factors are cited and discussed that greatly influence the analyses applied to a case problem by physicians. The most formidable of these factors are habits and the practice of defensive medicine. I conclude that clinical ethicists are less suited for the overall tasks required of an objective consultant in medical cases that appear to involve insurmountable ethical issues.     

Anticipatory Ethics for Emerging Technologies

In this essay, a new approach for the ethical study of emerging technology ethics will be presented, called anticipatory technology ethics (ATE). The ethics of emerging technology is the study of ethical issues at the R&;D and introduction stage of technology development through anticipation of possible future devices, applications, and social consequences. I will argue that a major problem for its development is the problem of uncertainty, which can only be overcome through methodologically sound forecasting and futures studies. I will then consider three contemporary approaches to the ethics of emerging technologies that use forecasting: ethical technology assessment, the techno-ethical scenarios approach and the ETICA approach, and I considered their strengths and weaknesses. Based on this critical study, I then present my own approach: ATE. ATE is a conceptually and methodologically rich approach for the ethical analysis of emerging technologies that incorporates a large variety of ethical principles, issues, objects and levels of analysis, and research aims. It is ready to be applied to contemporary and future emerging technologies.     

Putting on Virtue Without Putting Off Feminists

Mary Wollstonecraft's account of virtue discourse and formation, which deploys ancient and medieval ethical resources for modern purposes, challenges a prevalent narrative in Christian ethics today. Several prominent Christian virtue ethicists have left the false impression that serious reflection on the virtues depends on pre‐modern traditions and the eschewal of modern resources. Troubled by skeptical quandaries and the difficulty of adjudicating conflicting claims about virtue, they are concerned with securing a pre‐modern court of appeals. Many feminists worry that these appeals unduly constrain because they naturalize what is contingent and fix what should be open to debate. Wollstonecraft does not share the skeptical concerns and so has no need for metaethical appeals. Adapting Edmund Burke's moral philosophy, her use of virtue discourse deploys his metaphor of “the wardrobe of the moral imagination” to more religious, radical, and democratic ends. This way of proceeding signals the possibility of a rapprochement between feminists of various stripes and those interested in deploying the discourse of the virtues for contemporary Christian ethics.     

Social Psychology and Virtue Ethics

Several philosophers have recently claimed to have discovered a new and rather significant problem with virtue ethics. According to them, virtue ethics generates certain expectations about the behavior of human beings which are subject to empirical testing. But when the relevant experimental work is done in social psychology, the results fall remarkably short of meeting those expectations. So, these philosophers think, despite its recent success, virtue ethics has far less to offer to contemporary ethical theory than might have been initially thought. I argue that there are plausible ways in which virtue ethicists can resist arguments based on empirical work in social psychology. In the first three sections of the paper, I reconstruct the line of reasoning being used against virtue ethics by looking at the recent work of Gilbert Harman and John Doris. The remainder of the paper is then devoted both to responding to their challenge as well as to briefly sketching a positive account of character trait possession.     

Jewish bioethics and medical genetics

Man has been aware of the science of genetics, i.e, how living things transport heritable traits to their offspring, since biblical times. However, knowledge regarding genetic disorders has increased greatly in recent years. Advances have been made with respect to both the methodology of genetic diagnosis and the treatment of genetic diseases. Both Jewish and secular ethicists, in general, approve of new genetic diagnostic techniques and genetic therapy if the risk/benefit ratio is favorable for humankind. However, all medical ethicists are still struggling with the ethical question: “To what extent should we tamper with the process of natural selection?”     

Some remarks about relativism and pseudo‐relativism in ethics

This article deals with socio‐cultural ethical relativism. An attempt is made to analyze an ethical relativistic statement, i.e. a statement which, prima facie, ascribes different value‐qualities to the same type of conduct, depending on the society in which it occurs. The conclusion arrived at is that, in the main, such statements do not express genuine relativism. On the other hand, views which can be regarded as genuinely relativistic, arc found to lack plausibility.     

Moral Imagination, Trading Zones, and the Role of the Ethicist in Nanotechnology

The societal and ethical impacts of emerging technological and business systems cannot entirely be foreseen; therefore, management of these innovations will require at least some ethicists to work closely with researchers. This is particularly critical in the development of new systems because the maximum degrees of freedom for changing technological direction occurs at or just after the point of breakthrough; that is also the point where the long-term implications are hardest to visualize. Recent work on shared expertise in Science & Technology Studies (STS) can help create productive collaborations among scientists, engineers, ethicists and other stakeholders as these new systems are designed and implemented. But collaboration across these disciplines will be successful only if scientists, engineers, and ethicists can communicate meaningfully with each other. The establishment of a trading zone coupled with moral imagination present one method for such collaborative communication.     

The Destiny of Creation: Theological Ethical Reflections on Laudato Si'

In this essay, I ask what the precise relation is between Laudato si's theology and its claims about our individual and corporate responsibility for the environment and the plight of the poor. To do so, I first clarify the relationship between the theological claims and its account of moral norms, situating the text within the history of western ethical theory. I then turn to reconstruct the submerged theology of the encyclical, focusing on Pope Francis's accounts of the techno‐economic paradigm and the possibility of an “integral ecology” paradigm. I end by assessing the text in terms of the coherence and plausibility of its argument as an ethical and theological statement.     

Scientific Research and the Public Trust

This essay analyzes the concept of public trust in science and offers some guidance for ethicists, scientists, and policymakers who use this idea defend ethical rules or policies pertaining to the conduct of research. While the notion that public trusts science makes sense in the abstract, it may not be sufficiently focused to support the various rules and policies that authors have tried to derive from it, because the public is not a uniform body with a common set of interests. Well-focused arguments that use public trust to support rules or policies for the conduct of research should specify (a) which public is being referred to (e.g. the general public or a specific public, such as a particular community or group); (b) what this public expects from scientists; (c) how the rule or policy will ensure that these expectations are met; and (d) why is it important to meet these expectations.     

Creaturely Solidarity

This essay examines several recent contributions to the growing literature on animal ethics from Christian perspectives. I categorize the four books under review in one of three ways depending on the scholars' methodological points of departure: (1) a reconstruction of the place of other animals in Christian history through a selective retrieval of texts and practices; (2) an identification of a key Christian ethical principle; and (3) a reconsideration of foundational doctrines of systematic theology. On the premise that social ethicists are interested in not only understanding the world, but also changing it, I observe that these authors have offered different answers to the following three questions: (1) whether the theoretical basis for reform is ultimately grounded upon notions of human sameness or difference with other animals; (2) whether scholar‐activists should emphasize logic over passion or values over interests (or vice versa) in their calls for transformation; and (3) whether moral motivation for their targeted audiences is best served by reliance upon secular argumentation and interdisciplinary research or upon the distinctive claims of revelation and other tradition‐specific norms. I conclude by offering my own thoughts about which approaches might prove more effective than others.     

Ethics, Speculation, and Values

Some writers claim that ethicists involved in assessing future technologies like nanotechnology and human enhancement devote too much time to debating issues that may or may not arise, at the expense of addressing more urgent, current issues. This practice has been claimed to squander the scarce and valuable resource of ethical concern. I assess this view, and consider some alternatives to ‘speculative ethics’ that have been put forward. I argue that attempting to restrict ethical debate so as to avoid considering unacceptably speculative scenarios would not only leave scientific progress devoid of ethical guidance, but would also rule out some of our most important ethical projects. I conclude that the issue of speculation is a red herring: what is most important is not that ethicists concentrate on current issues or those that are most likely to arise; but that ethicists, scientists, and others focus on maximising what is most valuable.

Representation and computation in a deflationary assessment of Connectionist cognitive science

Connectionism provides hope for unifying work in neuroscience, computer science, and cognitive psychology. This promise has met with some resistance from Classical Computionalists, which may have inspired Connectionists to retaliate with bold, inflationary claims on behalf of Connectionist models. This paper demonstrates, by examining three intimately connected issues, that these inflationary claims made on behalf of Connectionism are wrong. This should not be construed as an attack on Connectionism, however, since the inflated claims made on its behalf have the look of cures for which there are no ailments. There is nothing wrong with Connectionism for its failure to solve illusory problems.