Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (Australia)

Since 2000, the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE) has been an Australian Research Council Special Research Centre, and is affiliated with Australian National University, Charles Sturt University, and University of Melbourne. CAPPE's mission is to make philosophical theory, as well as more empirical research, available and accessible to aid the public in understanding and making informed decisions in the realm of government, criminal justice, healthcare, the media, business, the family and social welfare, science, technology, and the environment. CAPPE includes information technology (IT) and nanotechnology: ethics of emergent technology as among its six main research areas.

CAPPE staff also provides supervision for postgraduate research degrees in applied philosophy, leading to the M.A., M.Phil, and Ph.D. at one of the affiliated [Page 85]universities. Students study bioethics, and IT and nanotechnology, among other topics.

The IT and nanotechnology program at CAPPE counts the Precautionary Principle in Nanotechnology among its core projects. Staff therefore are engaged in writing papers on various topics regarding the precautionary principle. For example, Dr. Stephen Clark presented a paper on the topic to the James Martin Advanced Research Seminar Series in Oxford. In it, he reflects on the lack of coherence or consensus in discussion of the precautionary principle. Professor John Weckert, another CAPPE staff member, was coauthor of a paper in which he defends the coherence of the precautionary principle, in the context of nanotechnology. Weckert is also the editor-in-chief of the journal Nanoethics.