Speculative Ethics

Mind the Gap

One of the main arguments for speculative ethics refers to the generally supposed speed of nanotechnological development. In 2003, Anisa Mnyusiwalla, Abdallah Daar, and Peter Singer therefore spoke of a gap that is threatening to open up between the scientific creation of novel materials, processes, and devices and their ethical reflection: “as the science leaps ahead, the ethics lags behind.” In a May 2009 commentary piece in Nature Nanotechology, Alfred Nordmann and Arie Rip inverse that formula. They argue that there is quite a bit of ethical reflection and that one might worry about ethics leaping ahead as the science the lags behind in respect to the envisioned and debated technological developments.

The conflicting assessments revolve around at least three questions: (1) it is very difficult to know for anyone what is a likely outcome of nanotechnological development and what will prove to be outrageously exaggerated vision or hype. What is the best way to deal with this uncertainty?; (2) ethical reflection is not an idle activity but should be relevant for the decisions that individuals and societies need to make about new and emerging technologies. Because we cannot give equal attention to any and all issues that are raised in ethical discussions, how do we avoid squandering the limited resource of ethical concern?; and (3) even if is agreed that ethical considerations serve to prepare us for what is to come, it is very much a matter of dispute whether one should conceive of future technologies as “what is to come.”

Future technologies are yet to be developed, after all, and human beings have some say in what will come and what not. How can we avoid a technological determinism according to which envisioned technologies are looming at the horizon already, just sitting and waiting to be realized sooner or later?

[Page 733]Proponents and opponents of speculative ethics agree that it is hard to find the right balance on this question. In her defense of speculative ethics, Rebecca Roache adds that this is particularly difficult when one considers future technologies like nanotechnology and human enhancement “which many claim could have an unprecedented effect on our lives, and on what it means to be human.” Significantly, Roache here refers to a claim that on her account may be false. It is as of yet an open question, after all, whether nanotechnology will have an unprecedented effect on our lives. Nevertheless, the quoted passage takes this effect to be so real that ethical reasoning has to adapt to it by becoming speculative. While this defense presupposes the very point in question, the situation becomes more bewildering when the gravity of a threat is said to overwhelm questions of probability. For example, in the introduction to a collection of papers on nanoethics, Fritz Allhof and his coeditors write that even if a certain advanced nanotechnology is a remote possibility, “its scenarios appear so disruptive that they merit consideration.” On this account, precautionary ethical reflection should be proportionate to the magnitude and not to the likelihood of an envisioned future event.

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