Laurens Landeweerd

Adapt or perish? Assessing the recent shift in the European research funding arena from ‘ELSA’ to ‘RRI’

Two decades ago, in 1994, in the context of the 4th EU Framework Programme, ELSA was introduced as a label for developing and funding research into the ethical, legal and social aspects of emerging sciences and technologies. Currently, particularly in the context of EU funding initiatives such as Horizon2020, a new label has been forged, namely Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). What is implied in this metonymy, this semantic shift? What is so new about RRI in comparison to ELSA? First of all, for both labels, the signifier (S) was introduced in a top-down manner, well before the concept that was signified by it (s) had acquired a clear and stable profile. In other words, the signifier preceded (and helped or helps to shape) the research strategies actually covered by these labels (the precedence of the signifier over the signified: S/s). Moreover, the newness of RRI does not reside in its interactive and anticipatory orientation, as is suggested by authors who introduced the term, but rather in its emphases on social-economic impacts (valorisation, employment and competitiveness).

Distributing Responsibility in the Debate on Sustainable Biofuels

In the perception of technology innovation two world views compete for domination: technological and social determinism. Technological determinism holds that societal change is caused by technological developments, social determinism holds the opposite. Although both were quite central to discussion in the philosophy, history and sociology of technology in the 1970s and 1980s, neither is seen as mainstream now. They do still play an important role as background philosophies in societal debates and offer two very different perspectives on where the responsibilities for an ethically sound development of novel technologies lie. In this paper we will elaborate on these to two opposing views on technology development taking the recent debate on the implementation of biofuels as a case example.

Smart-Glasses: Exposing and Elucidating the Ethical Issues

The objective of this study is to provide an overview over the ethical issues relevant to the assessment, implementation, and use of smart-glasses. The purpose of the overview is to facilitate deliberation, decision making, and the formation of knowledge and norms for this emerging technology. An axiological question-based method for human cognitive enhancement including an extensive literature search on smart-glasses is used to identify relevant ethical issues. The search is supplemented with relevant ethical issues identified in the literature on human cognitive enhancement (in general) and in the study of the technical aspects of smart-glasses. Identified papers were subject to traditional content analysis: 739 references were identified of which 247 were regarded as relevant for full text examinations, and 155 were included in the study. A wide variety of ethical issues with smart-glasses have been identified, such as issues related to privacy, safety, justice, change in human agency, accountability, responsibility, social interaction, power and ideology. Smart-glasses are envisioned to change individual human identity and behavior as well as social interaction. Taking these issues into account appears to be relevant when developing, deliberating, deciding on, implementing, and using smart-glasses.

Genomics in Industry: issues of a bio-based economy

What value does genomics hold for industry? Ten years after the White House Press conference where the human genome sequence was first presented, we ask in which ways and to what extent the developments in genomics have been integrated into industry. This enables us to assess whether this integration has been as successful as expected, but also which unexpected developments in genomics advances have triggered additional benefits for industry. Genomics has contributed to the beginning of a global transition to a bio-based economy, but there have been and there still are hurdles to be cleared. The hurdles are not merely of a technological nature, since the objectives are a complex between economic progress, environmental and global climate concerns, and energy security. Therefore, they are at the same time technological, societal and environmental in nature. These categorisations fall short of articulating the many issues that arise, such as economic development (for emerging economies), public opinion formation and scientific and technological progress. We argue that to make this transition happen, industrialists, policy makers and the wider public have to be prepared to be more actively involved in the debate, weighing the pros and cons and taking responsibility in creating the desired sustainable world.This paper will examine the advances of genomics in the industrial context, the role of these advances in current attempts to find sustainable solutions to a variety of problems, the enthusiasm with which they have been picked up, the implications for industrial innovation and the accompanying discussion about possible consequential social and ethical issues. It will also sketch out the nature of this ongoing establishment of a bio-based economy, the parties that are currently at the negotiation table, and whether the current situation has an impact on the way societal debates emerge.

Responsible Research and Innovation in the context of human cognitive enhancement: some essential features

ABSTRACTHuman cognitive enhancement (HCE) is an area in which non-therapeutic enhancements have been widely debated. Some applications are already on the market and available for home use (e.g. non-invasive brain stimulation devices), while other forms of enhancement such as ‘smart drugs’ or pharmacological enhancers are readily available (albeit ‘off-label’ or illegally obtained). Private and public interest in HCE may well intensify as the field engages with broader societal trends such as an increasingly competitive work-life and greater demands for productivity, in addition to increased interest in cognitive enhancement more generally. There is thus a need for some dedicated and timely consideration of the area, particularly with regard to governance issues. Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) offers one possible approach that aims to anticipate and reflect on potential implications and societal expectations with respect to research and innovation. This article takes up current work on the HCENA...

Continental philosophical perspectives on life sciences and emerging technologies

* Correspondence: h.zwart@science.ru.nl Department of Philosophy and Science Studies, Faculty of Science, Institute for Science, Innovation and Society (ISIS), Radboud University Nijmegen (the Netherlands), p.p. box 9010 6500 GL, Nijmegen, the Netherlands Aims and scope of the thematic series Life sciences and emerging technologies raise a plethora of issues. Besides practical, bioethical and policy issues, they have broader, cultural implications as well, affecting and reflecting our zeitgeist and world-view, challenging our understanding of life, nature and ourselves as human beings, and reframing the human condition on a planetary scale. In accordance with the aims and scope of the journal, LSSP aims to foster engaged scholarship into the societal dimensions of emerging life sciences (Chadwick and Zwart 2013) and via this thematic series, the journal provides a podium for authors who intend to address concrete issues from a ‘continental philosophical’ perspective, which may include (post)phenomenology, hermeneutics, dialectics, (post)structuralism, psychoanalysis, critical theory and similar approaches. The series aims to contribute to a diagnostics of the present and a prognostics of the future, focusing on critical normative challenges (such as embodiment, intimate technologies, social justice, biopower, nanomedicine, human enhancement and the anthropocene) and building on the work of key authors such as Hegel (1830), Heidegger (1953, 1953/1954), Bachelard (1938), Canguilhem (1975), Lacan (1966, 1969-1970/1991), Habermas (1968), Serres (1972), Foucault (1969), Žižek (2006/2009), Stiegler (2010), Sloterdijk (2001, 2009) and others, but targeting concrete up-to-date events and case studies against the backdrop of broader developments within the techno-scientific culture. Rather than as a euro-centric position, we aim to develop continental perspectives in interaction with moral deliberations currently unfolding on a truly global scale. Finally, special attention is given to genres of the imagination (novels, movies, theatre, art) as laboratories for reflection (Zwart 2014, 2016b).

Creative tensions: mutual responsiveness adapted to private sector research and development

The concept of mutual responsiveness is currently based on little empirical data in the literature of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). This paper explores RRI’s idea of mutual responsiveness in the light of recent RRI case studies on private sector research and development (R&D). In RRI, responsible innovation is understood as a joint endeavour of innovators and societal stakeholders, who become mutually responsive to each other in defining the ‘right impacts’ of the innovation in society, and in steering the innovation towards realising those impacts. Yet, the case studies identified several reasons for why the idea of mutual responsiveness does not always appear feasible or desirable in actual R&D situations. Inspired by the discrepancies between theory and practice, we suggest three further elaborations for the concept of responsiveness in RRI. Process-responsiveness is suggested for identifying situations that require stakeholder involvement specifically during R&D. Product-responsiveness is suggested for mobilising the potential of innovation products to be adaptable according to diverse stakeholder needs. Presponsiveness is suggested as responsiveness towards stakeholders that are not (yet) reachable at a given time of R&D. Our aim is to contribute to a more tangible understanding of responsiveness in RRI, and suggest directions for further analysis in upcoming RRI case studies.

After birth abortion: a biomedical and conceptual nonsense.

Abstract Recently, two authors suggested that killing a healthy newborn might be morally permissible, subsuming it under the heading of ‘after birth abortion’. Their proposed new definition implies that infanticide should be permitted whenever II trimester abortion for social reasons is. The suggestion stirred public outcry; nonetheless it needs to be analyzed since some 20% of countries allow II trimester abortion for social reasons and 5% do this on demand. A proper delimitation of the definition of “abortion” is thus very important to ensure careful application; for this reason we have attempted a critical analysis of their arguments. In the area of pregnancy termination different moral standards are apparently applied in different countries, but many reasons exist why the equation between II trimester abortion for social reasons and the killing of healthy neonates is to be morally rejected in all cases. The “inversed reification” of the concept of infanticide as a more abstract, euphemistic ‘after birth abortion’ blurs the fundamental difference between a non-viable fetus and a viable neonate. The best-known and most widely utilized (although illegal) “social reason” for “late abortion” and “infanticide” is a pregnancy with a female fetus or neonate. If infanticide for neonates were to be considered morally permissible, specifically it is this practice that would be applied. And this should be rejected on two levels: conceptual, through a critique of the exclusive use of one specific notion of personhood, and pragmatic through refusal of gender-discriminatory forms of infanticide (the killing of female neonates). In conclusion, having investigated the new concept we have concluded that the term “after birth abortion” is biologically and conceptually nonsensical.

The Adequacy of the Frameworks for Ethical Assessment of HCE Applications

In the previous section, we have seen that there are several ethical frameworks that can be used to assess HCE applications and in Chap. 3 we reviewed the general ethical issues raised by HCE applications. We are now in a position to discuss which of the six above mentioned frameworks seem to fit best for assessing HCE applications.

Ethical Concerns in HCE: The Examples of Cognitive Enhancing Drugs and Noninvasive Brain Stimulation

In the mapping of ethical issues regarding human cognitive enhancement, we used a two-tiered approach in which we first carried out a systematic search, followed by the addition of references found in the literature identified in this search. We will here first present the two applications (or rather, areas of applications) that we focused on in our literature search. Then we will go through the main ethical issues that we identified in the search.