The program of intervening, manipulating, constructing and creating is central to natural and engineering sciences. A renewed wave of interest in this program has emerged within the recent practices and discourse of nano-technoscience. However, it is striking that, framed from the perspective of well-established epistemologies, the constructed technoscientific objects and engineered things remain invisible. Their ontological and epistemological status is unclear. The purpose of the present paper is to support present-day approaches to techno-objects ( ontology ) insofar as they make (...) these hidden objects epistemologically perceivable. To accomplish this goal, it is inspiring to look back to the origin of the project of modernity and to its founding father: Francis Bacon. The thesis is that everything we need today for an adequate (dialectic-materialist), ontologically well-informed epistemology of technoscience can be found in the works of Bacon—this position will be called epistemological real-constructivism. Rather than describing it as realist or constructivist, empiricist or rationalist, Bacon’s position can best be understood as real-constructivist since it challenges modern dichotomies, including the dichotomy between epistemology and ontology. Such real-constructive turn might serve to promote the acknowledgement that natural and engineering sciences, in particular recent technosciences, are creating and producing the world we live in. Reflection upon the contemporary relevance of Bacon is intended as a contribution to the expanding and critical discussion on nano-technoscience. (shrink)

In the wake of the emergence and rapid development of nanoethics there swiftly followed fundamental criticism: nanoethics was said to have become much too involved with speculative developments and was concerning itself too little with actually pending questions of nanotechnology design and applications. If this diagnosis is true, then large parts of nanoethics are misguided. Such fundamental criticism must surely either result in a radical reorientation of nanoethics or be refuted for good reasons. In this paper, I will examine the (...) critics’ central arguments and, building on this scrutiny, formulate an answer to these alternatives. The results lead to conclusions which allow explaining and unfolding the thesis of this paper that instead of speculative nanoethics we should better speak of and develop explorative philosophy of nanotechnology. (shrink)

(Deutsch:) Es werden zunächst drei Hinsichten unterschieden, nach denen die in einer Situation offenstehenden Möglichkeiten vorstrukturiert erscheinen: materiell, sozial und subjektiv. Während in materieller Hinsicht Möglichkeiten schlicht vorgegeben sind, werden Möglichkeiten gesellschaftlich als zulässig oder unzulässig skandiert, d.i. hervorgehoben, oder bleiben unskandiert. In subjektiver Hinsicht sind es vor allem die Fähigkeiten des Einzelnen, die diese Möglichkeiten er- oder verschließen. Technisierung erscheint in dieser Perspektive als sichernde Vorstrukturierung von Möglichkeitsräumen, die subjektiv stets mit der Abblendung oder Abschattung bestimmter Sachverhalte und Möglichkeiten, (...) der Erzeugung einer Zone der Latenz, einhergeht. Wie aus emanzipatorischer Perspektive mit dieser Dynamik umzugehen ist, ist Thema des letzten Abschnitts. -/- (English:) At the beginning of the text, I distinguish between three respects in which the options and possibilities within a given situation are prestructured: materially, socially, and subjectively. While certain options and possibilities are simply predetermined by the physical structure of a situation, many options are socially accentuated (skandiert) as admissible or inadmissible, while other options remain unaccented. With respect to the subject, options are primarily made accessible and disclosed through the particular capabilities of the agent. From such a point of view, mechanization (Technisierung) can be described as the safe-guarding prestructuring of spaces of possibility, which is always linked with the fading of certain circumstances and possibilities, the establishment of a domain of latency. How to cope with this dynamic from an emancipatory perspective is the subject of the last section of the paper. (shrink)

Welche Zukunft erwartet die Menschheit? Oder müsste man fragen: Welche möglichen Zukünfte liegen im Gestaltungsbereich des Menschen? Was passiert, wenn wir eine superintelligente Maschine erfinden, die uns sogar ermöglicht, der Vergänglichkeit zu entrinnen? Welchen Einfluss haben die Technologien auf die Arbeit oder auf unsere Wahrnehmung der Zeit?

In this chapter, I propose the mechanism of cognitive enhancement based on studies of cognitive-enhancing drugs and behavioral training. I argue that there are mechanistic differences between cognitive-enhancing drugs and behavioral training due to their different enhancing effects. I also suggest possible mechanisms for cognitive-enhancing drugs and behavioral training and for the synergistic effects of their simultaneous application.

This paper aims to review different discourses within the emerging field of ethical reflection on nanotechnology. I will start by analysing the early stages of this debate, showing how it has been focused on searching for legitimacy for this sphere of moral inquiry. I will then characterise an ethical approach, common to many authors, which frames ethical issues in terms of risks and benefits. This approach identifies normative issues where there are conflicts of interest or where challenges to the fundamental (...) values of our society arise. In response to the limitations of this approach, other commentators have called for more profound analysis of the limits of our knowledge, and have appealed to values, such as sustainability or responsibility, which should, they suggest, inform nanotechnological development (I will define this approach as a “sophisticated form of prudence”). After showing the ways in which these frameworks are limited, I will examine more recent developments in debates on nanoethics which call for the contextualisation of ethical discourse in its ontological, epistemic and socio-economic and political reflections. Such contextualisation thus involves inquiry into the ‘metaphysical research program’ (MRP) of nanotechnology/ies and analysis of the socio-economic, political and historical reality of nano. These ideas offer genuinely new insights into the kind of approach required for nanoethical reflection: they recover a sense of the present alongside the need to engage with the past, while avoiding speculation on the future. (shrink)

Nanomedicine promises unprecedented innovations for diagnosis and therapy as well as for predicting and preventing diseases. On the other hand it raises fears linked to new and unknown characteristics of nanoscale materials. Both, promises and fears, are closely linked to the realm of uncertainty. To a large extent it is currently not known which expectations could become reality and which suspected adverse events might come true. Medicine is quite familiar with decision-making under uncertainty. Rules and regulations for clinical research have (...) been developed to reduce possible harm for research participants without abandoning necessary investigations. Here we examine whether clinical research trials of nanomedicine need new regulations and conclude that the established rules should suffice. (shrink)

This article concentrates on development of the mutual relations between ethics of technology and so called technology assessment. It shows both identical and different signs of the interactions on examples taken from Germany and from the Czech Republic. Discussion on technology in Germany is noted for its strong moral charge – we can find here both enthusiasm for technology as well as very clean cut anti-technology attitudes. As for the Czech environment, there comes to mutual mixing of various attitudes – (...) we can trace here inspiration taken from other countries – for example from France. The original contribution of the Czech way of thinking in the field of philosophy on technology in relation to ethics represents also so called conception of laboretism. Globally said, it appears that disputes over technology have their cause in various ethical attitudes of interested stakeholders. But different conceptions of what is and/or what is not ethical can be and should be analysed by rational means. Various practical objectives of the social technology assessment should not displace ethics in technology as a methodology of discursive management of technology conflicts. Scientific consultancy has to comprise both its descriptive and prescriptive aspects. It gives a new sense to interdisciplinary co-operation among various scientific disciplines and science and technology ethics. (shrink)