[e-mail]

1

• ISTs ETHICS
• k.boyd_at_ed.ac.uk

2
DEAD METAPHORS OF BIOTECHNOLOGY

• technology suggests a process over which we
  have control?
• techne (art, skill, craft) from
• tikto (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 childrenis 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

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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 1974143
• evolution in the fast lane
• Rollin B The Frankenstein Syndrome Cambridge CUP
  1995

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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 Parkinsons,
  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

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JUSTIFYING RISKS

• Risks of unknown unknowns may be morally
  justifiable if
• prior to use in humans the therapy has been shown
  to be sufficiently effective and safe
• the condition (disease/disability) to be treated
  is sufficiently serious
• a sufficient population of healthy volunteers and
  patients is prepared to give
• sufficiently informed consent to participating in
  human studies
• Each of these sufficients 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.

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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 individuals other capacities (Aspergers,
  dogs)
• or the integrity of their physiology and
  personality ?
• Can running the risks (unknown unknowns) of
  enhancement be morally justified?

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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/soc
  iety/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/s10806-010-92
  70-6

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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/s10806-010-92
  70-6
• RESPECT
• RESPONSIBILITY
• REALISM
• RECOURSE TO THE GOLDEN RULE
• ISTs for home monitoring of people with mild
  Alzheimers greater independence or greater
  isolation?

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METAPHYSICS OF RECOGNITIONG Gillett Cyborgs and
moral identity J Med Ethics 2006327983. 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.

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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