Living Technology
Philosophy and Ethics at the Crossroads Between Life and Technology
Armin Grunwald
- 344 pages
- English
- ePUB (adapté aux mobiles)
- Disponible sur iOS et Android
Living Technology
Philosophy and Ethics at the Crossroads Between Life and Technology
Armin Grunwald
Ă propos de ce livre
The boundaries between inanimate technology and the realm of the living become increasingly blurred. Deeper and deeper technological interventions into living organisms are possible, covering the entire spectrum of life from bacteria to humans. Simultaneously, digitalization and artificial intelligence (AI) enable increasingly autonomous technologies. Inanimate technologies such as robots begin to show characteristics of life. Contested issues pop up, such as the dignity of life, the enhancement of animals for human purposes, the creation of designer babies, and the granting of robot rights.
The book addresses the understanding of the ongoing dissolution of the life/technology borders, the provision of ethical guidance for navigating research and innovation responsibly, and the philosophical reflection on the meaning of the current shifts. It offers three specific perspectives for understanding the challenges and providing orientation. First, the dissolution of the boundaries between technology and life is analyzed and reflected from both sides. Second, the search for orientation is not restricted to ethics but also involves philosophy of technology and of nature, as well as anthropology. Finally, instead of restricting the analysis to specific areas of life, e.g., bacteria or animals, the book presents a comprehensive look at the entire spectrum of living organismsâbacteria and viruses, plants, animals and humansâand robots as possible early forms of emerging technical life.
Foire aux questions
Informations
Chapter 1
What You Will Find in This Book?
1.1 The Point of Departure: Observations
1.2 The Mission: Targets and Objectives
- (1) Substantiating the diagnosis: The diagnosis of dissolving boundaries will be underpinned by in-depth case studies. Within these studies, I will analyze various highly dynamic fields, which lie between biology, medicine, and technology, with respect to the process and shape of the dissolution, the state of the art of science and technology, the intended applications and challenges, and the perspectives and visions ahead. This will be conducted in the fields of synthetic biology, animal enhancement, human genome editing, human enhancement, and autonomous technologies. Obviously, a whole book could be dedicated to each of these fields, while the space available in this volume is limited. Therefore, I will focus on those aspects specifically related to the changing boundary between technology and life (e.g., Chopra and Kamma, 2006; Tucker and Zilinskas, 2006; Boogerd et al., 2007; Adamatzky and Kosiminski, 2009; Gutmann et al., 2015).
- (2) Providing ethical guidance: In order to meet the demand for orientation, ethical guidance for navigating responsibly into and through the age of living technology will be provided. While the scientific and technological advance offers a vast range of new opportunities, it simultaneously leads to debates, controversies, and even hard conflicts with two different origins. First, unintended side effects have accompanied the entire techno-scientific advance (Grunwald, 2019a), which applies to the fields considered in this book, too. Uncertainty and risk are therefore an inherent part of their development as well as of public and scientific concern. Second, the moral status of living organisms, e.g., animals, could be affected or even violated by technical intervention, e.g., by animal enhancement or human genome editing. The philosophical approach to responsibility will be applied as the overarching concept to make ethical reflection in both directions operable and to support the creation of responsible pathways to the future (e.g., Miller and Selgelid, 2006; Merkel et al., 2007; Owen et al., 2013; Cussins and Lowthorp, 2018; Nuffield Council on Bioethics, 2018).
- (3) Reflecting anthropological shift: While ethical and responsibility reflections are without any doubt needed to provide orientation for action and decision-making for the next steps toward the future, they cannot cover all the demands for orientation. New interfaces and crossroads between life and technology and the transgression of the former strict boundary affects human perception and conceptualization both of the outer world and of human self-images. This book, therefore, is also dedicated to reflecting the concepts of life and technology, including their generally strict separation, at least in Western reasoning. Because these have deeply shaped human mind and thought for centuries and even millennia, new accentuations or shifts of meaning are of the highest importance and have to be investigated. To this end, philosophy of nature, philosophy of technology, and anthropology will be involved, beyond ethics (e.g., Searle, 1980; Grunwald et al., 2002; Reggia, 2013; Wallach and Allen, 2009).
- Most of the books available look either at technical interventions into living systems, such as animals or humans, or at technical artefacts like robots receiving more and more autonomy, which was formerly a property of life only. Considering and reflecting the dissolution of the boundary between technology and life from both sides, as is done in this book, is specific.
- While ethical inquiry in the fields touched upon sticks to the respective sub-disciplines of applied ethics, such as bioethics, animal ethics, ethics of technology, or risk ethics, this book goes further. It provides deeper scrutiny with respect to philosophy and anthropology in order to achieve better understanding of the dissolution processes at the boundaries between life and technology and the emergence of new crossroads.
- Usually, books focus on specific areas of life, e.g., on gene editing of plants, on interventions into the human germline, or on artificial intelligence showing some properties similar to life. This book, however, p...