Transcript Ethicist Slides - Mason Institute

ISTs ETHICS
[email protected]
ISTs ETHICS
1
DEAD METAPHORS OF BIOTECHNOLOGY
•
•
•
•
•
‘technology’ – suggests a process over which we have control?
technē (art, skill, craft) from
tiktō (to bring into the world, beget or bear)
teknon (that which is borne or born, cf. the Scots bairn, a child)
‘What may have to be borne about children…is that they do not turn out to
be what was hoped for or expected.’
•
‘The Two-Edged Sword: Biotechnology and Mythology’ in Kltozko AJ (ed) The Cloning Sourcebook OUP 2001: 94-108
ISTs ETHICS
2
RISKS OF BIO-ENGINEERING
‘In hardware engineering, the number of “unknowns” is practically nil, and
the engineer can accurately predict the properties of his product. For the
biological engineer, who has to take over, “sight-unseen,” the untold
complexity of the given determinants with their self-functioning dynamics,
the number of unknowns in the design is immense.’
Jonas H. Philosophical Essays. Chicago: U of Chicago P 1974:143
‘evolution in the fast lane’
Rollin B The Frankenstein Syndrome Cambridge: CUP 1995
ISTs ETHICS
3
REDUCING RISKS OF UNKNOWN UNKNOWNS?
•
•
•
•
•
•
By ‘bottom up’ approaches – cf., e.g., synthetic biology ‘biobricks’?
By lifetime monitoring – cf., xenotransplantation?
By implanting only to achieve a specific and well-established result, e.g.,
Cochlear implants (1970s-80 adults, 1980s-90s children) ?
‘Brain pacemakers’ – DBS for Parkinson’s, depression, OCD *?
Computer translation into action (respiratory control/manipulation of
prosthetic limbs) of neurons firing in the motor cortex.* ?
*Naufel S ‘Nanotechnology, the Brain, and Personal Identity in Hays SA et al (eds) Nanotechnology, the Brain, and the Future. Yearbook of Nanotechnology in
Society 3 2013: 167-178
ISTs ETHICS
4
JUSTIFYING RISKS
Risks of ‘unknown unknowns’ may be morally justifiable if
1.
prior to use in humans the therapy has been shown to be sufficiently
effective and safe
2.
the condition (disease/disability) to be treated is sufficiently serious
3.
a sufficient population of healthy volunteers and patients is prepared to
give
4.
sufficiently informed consent to participating in human studies
Each of these ‘sufficient’s involves a judgement , which by definition is
fallible and contestable, and needs to be negotiated between the parties
involved: e.g. in all cases ultimately legislators and the law, but
specifically in (1) scientist and regulators, in (2) with those who have the
condition (including those who may not believe their condition is a
disability), in (3), scientists and statisticians, and in (4) participants.
ISTs ETHICS
5
WORRIES ABOUT ENHANCEMENT
•
•
No bright line can be drawn in principle between therapy and enhancement
Presumably STIs could be used to extend capacities already extendable by
external devices, or mental or physical training, e.g.
– night sight, distance sight/hearing/smell, speed, and (how defined?) intelligence
•
•
•
•
How serious are the risks of ‘enhancing’ any one of these
on the individual’s other capacities (Asperger’s, dogs)
or the integrity of their physiology and personality ?
Can running the risks (unknown unknowns) of enhancement be morally
justified?
ISTs ETHICS
6
JUSTIFYING ENHANCEMENT
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Unknown unknowns of enhancement – again could be discovered only by experiment
Experiment could be morally and scientifically justified only if (eventually) conducted
on a sufficiently large and diverse population of volunteers, whose informed consent
could be judged to be the moral justification.
Could enough be induced? Possibly some, if in a sufficiently competitive context
(sport/military/academic)
If enough, would wider (social) moral justification be required?
Harm principle and equity would require that
benefits and risks of enhancement should be ‘evenly spread’ across
individuals/communities/society/societies
& wider: ‘Sustainability is a moral idea that involves equity over time and reflects both
intra-generational and inter-generational obligations to the larger human community,
and to the nonhuman world’. *
*Gjerris M, Gamborg C. Röcklinsberg H, Anthony R ‘The Price of Responsibility: Ethics of Animal Husbandry in a Time of Climate Change’
J Agric Environ Ethics DOI 10.1007/s10806-010-9270-6
ISTs ETHICS
7
VIRTUE ETHICS
•
ethics is not something you are done with at some point, but it is a continuous effort to illuminate the moral terrain
and to understand our basic values in light of our current challenges
*Gjerris M, Gamborg C. Röcklinsberg H, Anthony R ‘The Price of Responsibility: Ethics of Animal Husbandry in a Time of Climate Change’
J Agric Environ Ethics DOI 10.1007/s10806-010-9270-6
RESPECT
RESPONSIBILITY
REALISM
RECOURSE TO THE GOLDEN RULE
ISTs for home monitoring of people with mild Alzheimers: greater independence or greater isolation?
ISTs ETHICS
8
METAPHYSICS OF RECOGNITION
G Gillett Cyborgs and moral identity J Med Ethics 2006;32:79–83. doi: 10.1136/jme.2005.012583
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
‘‘What change in an object results in a metaphysical difference so that we have a different object (or kind of object) on our
hands from the one with which we started?’’
…it is the total form that is revealed in a lived life story that gives a being the identity which matters morally and that identity,
in the sense we respond to it in our moral thinking, is somewhat indifferent to the material of which the being is made except
in so far as that material affects the relevant lived experience (which is not independent of how we react and respond).
[need for] …reflective or perceptual equilibrium, involving both intuitions and a rational analysis of the facts surrounding
relevant encounters and their characteristics. In the end, however, one judges according to the responses one finds evoked
in oneself and their sustainability over time, and to reflection, in much the way that the Aristotelians claim. Faced with this
strange moral fruit we, ‘‘suck it and see’’.
Is the being before me able to feel pain? Does the being before me develop attachments and make an appeal to me? Does
the being before me have a story in which moral participation features? … what we ought to do is to be true to our nature as
beings who live as members of a kingdom of ends able to recognise, take account of, and respond to each others’
subjectivities as they are revealed in lived experience when we interact with each other and tell our stories.
… in any imaginable case, I think we ought to react on the basis of a sum, albeit complex, dynamic, and impossible to
reduce to formulations, of the mutual participation in language games where morality is relevant. On the basis of that
complex engagement in a many faceted discourse, our conception (metaphysical if you like) of what a human being is is
derived from the beings with whom we share these formative and sustaining interactions.
the epistemic virtues needed to gather the data relevant to the metaphysical question cannot be exercised in the absence
of the right moral attitudes.
It therefore seems to me that a cyborg is, on the present account, as human as his or her life among us indicates to those
who approach the encounter with an openness to others and a sense of life. The creature concerned ought then to be
treated as such an acquaintance would treat them.
ISTs ETHICS
9
MORALITY OF RESPONSIBILITY
Especially with respect to the brain, where technology intimately affects the
person at the location of their decision-making, personhood becomes an issue.
For example, if the user of a brain pacemaker is in fluenced by stimulation to
become more impulsive, and he or she commits a crime, how should the user
be treated? Is he or she a full person who is expected to uphold standards of
society by not breaking the law? Alternatively, should society give this
individual leniency because the technology aspect of his or her being cannot be
held morally accountable?
Naufel S ‘Nanotechnology, the Brain, and Personal Identity in Hays SA et al (eds) Nanotechnology, the Brain, and the Future.
Yearbook of Nanotechnology in Society 3 2013: 167-178
ISTs ETHICS
10