TY - JOUR
T1 - Playing God: Symbolic Arguments Against Technology
AU - Simons, M.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO).
Funding Information:
The research of this article was made possible by the Research Foundations Flanders (FWO). This article is the product of numerous discussions and debates with a set of philosophy professors at the KU Leuven, as well as with some biologists. In particular, I would like to thank Arnold Burms, Herman De Dijn, Paul Cortois, and Paul Moyaert. This article is dedicated to the memory of Krak, who, as a companion species, accompanied me on the many walks that shaped this article.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.
PY - 2022/8/30
Y1 - 2022/8/30
N2 - In ethical reflections on new technologies, a specific type of argument often pops up, which criticizes scientists for "playing God" with these new technological possibilities. The first part of this article is an examination of how these arguments have been interpreted in the literature. Subsequently, this article aims to reinterpret these arguments as symbolic arguments: they are grounded not so much in a set of ontological or empirical claims, but concern symbolic classificatory schemes that ground our value judgments in the first place. Invoking symbolic arguments thus refers to how certain new technologies risk undermining our fundamental symbolic distinctions by which we organize and evaluate our interactions with the world and in society. Such symbolic distinctions, moreover, tend to be resilient against logical argumentation, mainly because they themselves form the basis on which we argue in the cultural and ethical sphere in the first place. Therefore, effective strategies to evaluate and counter these arguments require another approach, showing that these technologies either do not challenge these classifications or, if they do, how they can be accompanied by the proper actions to integrate these technologies into our society.
AB - In ethical reflections on new technologies, a specific type of argument often pops up, which criticizes scientists for "playing God" with these new technological possibilities. The first part of this article is an examination of how these arguments have been interpreted in the literature. Subsequently, this article aims to reinterpret these arguments as symbolic arguments: they are grounded not so much in a set of ontological or empirical claims, but concern symbolic classificatory schemes that ground our value judgments in the first place. Invoking symbolic arguments thus refers to how certain new technologies risk undermining our fundamental symbolic distinctions by which we organize and evaluate our interactions with the world and in society. Such symbolic distinctions, moreover, tend to be resilient against logical argumentation, mainly because they themselves form the basis on which we argue in the cultural and ethical sphere in the first place. Therefore, effective strategies to evaluate and counter these arguments require another approach, showing that these technologies either do not challenge these classifications or, if they do, how they can be accompanied by the proper actions to integrate these technologies into our society.
KW - Playing God
KW - Synthetic biology
KW - Climate engineering
KW - Symbolic distinctions
KW - SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY
KW - RELIGION
KW - ETHICS
U2 - 10.1007/s11569-022-00422-1
DO - 10.1007/s11569-022-00422-1
M3 - Article
SN - 1871-4757
VL - 16
SP - 151
EP - 165
JO - NanoEthics
JF - NanoEthics
IS - 2
ER -