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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
The book investigates the meaning of RRI if little or no valid knowledge about consequences of innovation and technology is available. It proposes a hermeneutical turn to investigate narratives about possible futures with respect to their contemporary meaning instead of regarding them as anticipations of the future.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title
Copyright
Foreword
Preface
1 What Makes New Science and Technology Meaningful to Society?
1.1. Motivation and objectives
1.2. The need for orientation in NEST fields
1.3. Short propaedeutic
1.4. A brief guide to this book
2 Extending the Object of Responsibility Assessments in RRI
2.1. Motivation and overview
2.2. Some impressions of RRI debates so far
2.3. A pragmatic view on the notion of responsibility
2.4. The object of responsibility debates in RRI so far
2.5. The object of responsibility debates in RRI: an extension
2.6. Concluding remarks
3 Assessing Responsibility by Considering Techno-Futures
3.1. Responsibility assessments: introduction and overview
3.2. Brief remarks on the epistemology of prospective knowledge
3.3. Responsibility for NEST: the orientation dilemma
3.4. Three modes of orientation
3.5. The hermeneutic approach to techno-visionary futures
4 Definitions and Characterizations of NEST as Construction of Meaning
4.1. Motivation and point of departure
4.2. Some observations from NEST debates
4.3. The pragmatic character of definitions
4.4. Defining and characterizing as meaning-giving activity
5 Understanding Nanotechnology: A Process Involving Contested Assignments of Meaning
5.1. Nanotechnology: a paradigmatic RRI story
5.2. The early time of nanotechnology: troubled beginnings
5.3. Defining nanotechnology: a mission impossible?
5.4. The meaning of nanotechnology: the shift from a revolutionary to a quite normal technology
6 Robots: Challenge to the Self-Understanding of Humans
6.1. Autonomous technology: challenges to our comprehension
6.2. Robots that can make plans and Man’s self-image
6.3. Technology futures in robotics
6.4. The hermeneutic view of robots
7 Enhancement as a Cipher of the Future
7.1. Introduction and overview
7.2. On the semantics of (technical) enhancement
7.3. Human enhancement
7.4. Animal enhancement
7.5. Conclusions
7.6. Enhancement as a cipher of the future
8 Technology to Combat Climate Change: the Hermeneutic Dimension of Climate Engineering
8.1. Climate change and the ambivalence of technology
8.2. Limitations of the previous approaches to finding a solution
8.3. Climate engineering as a technical option
8.4. Chances and risks of climate engineering
8.5. The hermeneutics of climate engineering
8.6. Epilogue: hermeneutic extension of the imperative of responsibility?
9 Hermeneutic Assessment: Toward an Interdisciplinary Research Program
9.1. Assigning meaning to NEST as object of responsibility
9.2. Hermeneutic approaches
9.3. The emergence of NEST meaning: hermeneutic assessment
9.4. Reflection and epilogue
Inspiration Behind the Chapters
Bibliography
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
1 What Makes New Science and Technology Meaningful to Society?
Figure 1.1. The creation of meaning for NEST in a hermeneutic circle, including its stimulus
3 Assessing Responsibility by Considering Techno-Futures
Figure 3.1. The consequentialist paradigm of technology assessment (from [GRU 12b])
Figure 3.2. Cone of futures with small opening angle, close to the prognostic ideal
Figure 3.3. Cone of futures with medium opening angle between worst-case and best-case scenarios
Figure 3.4. Cone of futures with large opening angle in the absence of reliable future knowledge
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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G1
G2
G3
Responsible Research and Innovation Set
coordinated by Bernard Reber
Volume 5
The Hermeneutic Side of Responsible Research and Innovation
Armin Grunwald
First published 2016 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:
ISTE Ltd27-37 St George’s RoadLondon SW19 4EUUK
www.iste.co.uk
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030USA
www.wiley.com
© ISTE Ltd 2016
The rights of Armin Grunwald to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016954166
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78630-085-0
Foreword
The author of this book has three precious skills to offer in the understanding and implementation of responsible research and innovation (RRI). He has been trained in physics, he is a philosopher and an important practitioner in the field of technological assessment (TA) and its inclusive form of participatory technological assessment (PTA). For this last reason, this book is very welcome to extend the content of the previous volume (Volume 4) in this set of books, Precautionary Principle, Moral Pluralism and Deliberation. Sciences and Ethics. Some of the problems addressed in both texts, practically and theoretically, are common to both the PTA and RRI fields. Armin Grunwald thinks that there is quite nothing new with RRI compared to PTA. In this way he replaces the novelty of RRI in a 30-year tradition, mainly developed in Europe, at least with public institutions, when these experiments are operated mainly by the private sector or universities out of this area.
As a physicist in charge of one of the biggest TA and PTA institutions, he could have insisted on the different ways to calculate the different risks of emerging technologies. Instead of calculation he appeals to forms of discourse. Indeed, before emerging in research programs, new technologies are produced in different narratives. What is a new trend in political discourses, “tell us a story for this project”, from a small program up to a European building, is true in innovation and research as well. As he writes, this book is to decipher the meaning assigned to new and emerging science and technology (NEST). When the so-called post-modern philosophies have preached their end, the big stories come back just like a boomerang. This need of a story is perhaps because of the fragmentation of knowledge necessary for developing the new technologies and in a second step their socio-political impacts on societies. The place of technologies in the globalization process is central. There would be no globalization without technologies, they are in transportation, information or communication and human biology. The RRI pillar pleading for open science is only a partial solution to the problem of the fragmentation of knowledge. As a medicine – the pharmakon, remedy, poison and scapegoat in Phaedrus exploited by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida – it can heal, but at the same time it can make the problem worse.
The action of assigning meaning, central to this book, is very close to the core of responsibility. One of the meanings of responsibility is imputation as presented in Volume 3 of this set by Sophie Pellé and Bernard Reber (From Ethical Review to Responsible Research and Innovation). Indeed, the meaning thus stands – just as, for example, that of responsibility (Chapter 2) – in a social and communicative context in which arguments for attributions are expected but can also be controversial.
Armin Grunwald conveys here another philosophical tradition: the hermeneutic one. From the theological field dealing with the study of texts, to Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur, this prolific sub-field of philosophy is specialized on the problem of interpretation. While the previous volume (Volume 4) was mainly focused on argumentation, this volume largely opens the space to interpretation. The problem of narrative is an “uncharted territory” in RRI debates. The field of new and emerging science and technology does not focus on those technologies as such. A breakthrough technical or scientific success does not have any societal meaning per se. Therefore, it is important to see how these meanings are created and disseminated. Attribution of responsibilities to new technology takes place at a very early stage of development. The assignment of meaning may even be decisive for social acceptance or rejection of technology.
Where Ricoeur was more interested in the identity problem, with five determinations of the human capacities – language, action, narration, ethics (responsibility) and memory – Armin Grunwald in his three forms of hermeneutics has introduced actions mediated by technologies, when some are sophisticated, and turned into the future.
This text echoes further volumes in three different ways.
Firstly, it deals with uncertain futures as in Volumes 1–4. The major origins of the production and assignment of meaning is based on techno-visionary futures and approaches to define and characterize new fields of science and technology, as Armin Grunwald has presented in detail, especially in Chapters 3 and 4. Indeed, these narratives play a decisive role in determining the nature of what is new. This is also true as an element in the ethical theories (see Volume 4). It follows here more a pragmatic line, meaning something (objects) for someone (addressee).
Secondly, these techno-visionary futures play an important role in what some present as anticipatory governance. Volume 4 of the set insisted more on the famous precautionary principle. We have here a contribution in the debate between anticipation and precaution. But traditional approaches based on consequentialist reasoning no longer work. We are facing problems of reliability. If the precautionary principle is used in cases where we have no means to build on reliable probabilities, these visions of the futures could have a role in the assessment.
In the debate regarding anticipatory governance, Grunwald puts more emphasis on the meaning of the projections as expressions of today’s diagnoses, perceptions, expectations, attitudes, hopes and fears instead of interpreting them as anticipation. We have another way to speak about the communicational expectations of Habermas, less normative and more focused on the objects than the people taking part in the interactions.
Thirdly, Armin Grunwald recognizes that he is mainly focused of the beginnings of a hermeneutic circle of reaching an understanding on the meaning of NEST developments. However, this initial station of the attribution of meaning is very crucial since it limits the diversity of alternatives. We find here a defence of the diversity of possibles and the recognition of the contested future, already tackled as an important issue between ethics and efficacy (Volume 1).
Fourthly, Armin Grunwald returns back to deliberation. We find in another way the theories of deliberative democracy, exposed and criticized in Volumes 3 and 4 of the set. Grunwald wants to clarify the roots of RRI and contribute to a more transparent democratic debate over the direction and the utilization of scientific and technological progress. A task that requires public involvement.
The hermeneutic approach sketched out in this book will hopefully contribute to the development and application of a new type of reasoning and policy advice in debates on future technology beyond traditional consequentialism. Different emerging technologies are studied through this interdisciplinary hermeneutic approach: nanotechnology, synthetic biology, human and animal enhancement, autonomous technologies, robots, technologies to fight against global warming. Very creative, clear as well as based on improved methods, this book unfolds an ambitious research project and a worthy contribution to philosophy.
Bernard ReberOctober 2016
Preface
Responsible research and innovation (RRI) has become an intensively debated concept for shaping future science, technology and innovation. This book is dedicated to the hermeneutic dimension of this concept by focusing on the first steps of emerging RRI debates. The main message is that the object of responsibility must be extended: beyond scrutinizing the responsibility for possible consequences of new science and technology in a more distant future, it is highly relevant to carefully observe the assignment of meaning to new science and technology in early stages of their development. Meaning is attributed by relating new science and technology to social and usually techno-visionary futures as well as by definitions and characterizations of these new fields. The aims of this book are to uncover these processes of assigning meaning, to put them in the context of responsibility, and to sketch a hermeneutic approach as an interdisciplinary research program for achieving a better understanding.
This book builds on research done by the author in the recent years and develops it further. An explanation of the origins of the various chapters and their relation to preceding work at the end of this book makes the novel approach transparent and shows clearly where I refer to existing work. The notion of hermeneutics with which I experimented over the last years serves as a conceptual umbrella.
Thanks have to be expressed in different respects. First, I would like to warmly thank Bernard Reber for inviting me to publish this book in the Responsible Research and Innovation set of books. Second, I highly benefited from many debates on RRI with my colleagues from the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) and with many colleagues from all over the world. Third, the fantastic work of Sylke Wintzer, Miriam Miklitz, and Michael Wilson on translation and proofreading made it possible to publish this book in excellent quality. Last but not least, I would like to thank Nina Katharina Hauer for carefully organizing the references and the bibliography.
Armin GRUNWALDSeptember 2016
1What Makes New Science and Technology Meaningful to Society?
Intensive and sometimes controversial debates about new forms of technology, especially those embodying a visionary perspective, have become a dominant field of communication between science, technology and society in the past decades. They make up the largest portion of the debates in the field of responsible research and innovation (RRI). In this introductory chapter, I ask how the social and ethical interest in new technology arises – in other words, how scientific and technical developments in the laboratory or in modeling are given real social meaning. The directions I examine in this book exist in a practical context. The objective is to clarify RRI studies and discussions about their roots and thus to contribute to a more transparent democratic debate over the direction and utilization of scientific and technological progress. The generation of sociotechnical meaning, which – according to my thesis – is essential for making new technology interesting for RRI debates, is not a task for scientists and engineers alone but requires public involvement.
1.1. Motivation and objectives
The debate on responsible research and innovation (RRI) [OWE 13a, VAN 14a] has so far been focusing on a comprehensive understanding of innovation [BES 13], on participatory processes to involve stakeholders, citizens and affected persons in design processes and decision making [SYK 13], on understanding responsibility in industry [IAT 16], and on ethical conceptions of responsibility [GRI 13, GRU 14a, GIA 16]. Furthermore, it is concerned to a large extent with identifying specific characteristics of RRI in order to distinguish it from established approaches to reflection on science and technology, such as technology assessment [GRU 09a], value sensitive design [VAN 13a], science, technology and society (STS) studies [WOO 14] and applied ethics [CHA 97]. Considerable effort is spent on profiling RRI among these approaches [OWE 13b, GRU 11a, VON 12].
These topics are without a doubt central to the further development of RRI. However, other aspects might also be crucial and must not be neglected. A question that has so far attracted hardly any attention is how the issues and challenges that are analyzed, discussed and reflected from different perspectives in the context of RRI come into being. My supposition is that this question is uncharted territory for RRI that is untapped in both an analytical and a practical sense. The goal of the book is to undertake some first steps toward exploring this uncharted territory. To provide a brief outline at the outset, I would like to make five observations at the beginning that should motivate the analyses presented in this book:
1) A
first observation
motivating this book is that RRI debates in the field of NEST
1
(new and emerging science and technology) do not focus on those technologies
as such
. For RRI debates to arise at all, the respective NEST developments such as synthetic biology, human enhancement or autonomous robotics must rather show relevant
meanings
[VAN 14b] in ethical, cultural, economic, social or political respects. A purely scientific breakthrough or a huge experimental success in laboratory research does not have any societal meaning
per se
. They may be scientifically or technologically fascinating but will not find resonance beyond unless a
further step
is done: it is only the
sociotechnical
combination of scientific and technological advance or projections, on the one hand, and their possible societal consequences and impacts, on the other, which triggers RRI debates. There would not be any RRI interest in NEST developments without the technological advance stories being related to expected, promised or feared societal consequences and implications. Only this second step makes new science and technology meaningful to society and a fascinating and often contested issue in society and its RRI debates. Then, questions will arise as to what might be in store for us or for future society, what might be at stake in ethical, political or social respects and what the NEST developments under consideration could mean in different respects for the future of humans and society. It is precisely these questions on the sociotechnical meaning of NEST that constitute the paramount object of the often controversial RRI debates. Thus, it appears obvious that we must deal explicitly with the issue of how these meanings are created and attributed, what their contents are, how they are communicated and disseminated and what consequences these attributions of meanings have in the RRI debates and beyond, e.g. for public opinion forming and political decision making.
2) The
second observation
guiding the analyses in this book concerns the role of futures for the creation and assignment of meaning, in particular the role of techno-visionary futures in NEST fields. A large body of research literature of the recent years legitimates stating that a major mechanism of assigning meaning to NEST developments is telling stories about the future impact and consequences, the expected benefits and risks of new technology under consideration for the future development of society, humankind or individual life. Techno-futures, in particular techno-visionary futures, play a key role in the attribution of meaning to NEST developments. In these futures, projections of new technology are associated with future images of humans and society, often in a purely hypothetical and thus also speculative manner:
“Those anticipations are meaning-giving activities, and their function is to prevent choices being taken blindly, or on the basis of too narrow fantasies of future actions which focus only on a sub-selection of possible follow-up actions and ignore significant groups of stakeholders” [VAN 14b, p. 102].
This observation (see Chapter 3) makes it possible to productively use the knowledge acquired in the previous decade about the role of techno-futures and visions [SEL 07, ROA 08, GRU 12a, COE 13, NOR 14] in order to investigate how meaning is assigned to new technologies by relating them to narratives of the future. These narratives involve perceptions, issues being considered as problems, expectations and hopes, worries and anxieties that give rise to questions and controversies. This field of “contested futures” [BRO 00] provides plenty of substance for RRI debates.
3) While the observation of the meaning-giving role of futures has already been discussed sporadically over the last years, the issue of how new sciences and technologies are defined and characterized and what the corresponding scoping processes and debates on an adequate characterization add to the meaning of those sciences and technologies has not been explicitly considered yet. Despite the fact that we have witnessed extensive and complex debates on the definition of nanotechnology [SCH 03, DEC 06], on the understanding of synthetic biology compared to other fields of biology and biotechnology [PAD 14], and on the understanding of human enhancement [GRU 12b], there is no conceptual debate on the meaning-giving function of these debates and processes. This seems surprising because obviously answers to questions such as what is substantially different between the NEST developments under consideration and existing lines of research and development are of high importance to attach societal meaning to them (see
Chapter 4
). Thus, the
third observation
to be substantiated in this book is that processes and controversies around the definition and characterization of new sciences and technologies are of major relevance for assigning meaning to them.
4) At this point, a
fourth observation
motivating this book becomes apparent. The attribution of meaning to a new technology by relating future stories to it or by proposing specific definitions usually takes place at a very early stage of development. In most cases, it will precede the respective RRI debate or accompany it in its nascent stage, but can then strongly mold the debate’s further development. Whether, for example, enhancement technology is attributed the meaning of offsetting inequalities in the physical and mental attributes of different humans and thus of leading to more fairness, or whether it is supposed to be used to fuel the competition for influential positions in the sense of promoting super-humans illustrates the great difference. Depending on which prevails, the respective NEST field will be assigned to one of these completely different discussions and put in a different context. The example shows that the assignment of meaning can heavily influence public debates and can possibly be crucial to public perception and attitudes by highlighting either chances or risks. At the end of the day, the assignment of meaning may even be decisive for social acceptance or rejection of that technology as well as for policy and decision making on the promotion or regulation of research and development. Thus, the possibly high impact of assigning meaning to NEST developments leads to the postulate of an early critical reconstruction, analysis and assessment of those meaning assignment processes, their results and their communication in order to enlighten the debate and to shed light on blind spots of those processes and debates (see
section 1.2
).
5) The
final basic observation
guiding the analyses to be provided in this book is that uncovering processes of assigning meaning to NEST developments involves considerable conceptual and methodological challenges. The assignments of meaning via techno-visionary futures, on the one hand, and by processes of definition and characterization, on the other hand, are interpretations, associations and, in the case of futures, partially speculations showing an epistemologically precarious nature and lacking strategies of proving them objectively. Mostly, it is extremely difficult or even impossible to say anything about the validity and reliability of those meaning-giving propositions – which, however, might have a major impact following the fourth observation above. This observation raises the questions of how to provide a well-reflected orientation for society and decision makers involved in NEST debates and policies. Provision of orientation knowledge is at the core of RRI – however, in the situation of lack of valid knowledge, traditional approaches based on consequentialist reasoning do no longer work (see
Chapter 3
) [GRU 14b]. If RRI and technology assessment nevertheless is to substantially contribute “to achieve better technology in a better society” [RIP 95] by analyzing meaning-giving processes, new approaches have to be developed. The
hermeneutic approach
sketched in this book will contribute to the development and application of a new type of reasoning and policy advice in debates on future technology beyond traditional consequentialism. Its objective is to allow deciphering the meanings assigned to NEST developments as early as possible in order to allow and support more transparent and enlightened debate.
These five observations are illustrated in Figure 1.1, which presents two elements:
– first, the creation and development of meaning and its attribution, whether by means of technology futures or characterizations, are regarded a
hermeneutic circle
: the available meanings on offer are communicated and discussed and, in the process, supplemented or modified. The history of the definition of nanotechnology [SCH 03] is an excellent example of this (see
Chapter 5
);
– second, this hermeneutic circle itself must have been created at some point. There must have been acts in which meaning is attributed, representing the first steps, and the hermeneutic circle mentioned above can then develop out of them. For nanotechnology, Richard Feynman’s famous lecture [FEY 59] or the book
Engines of Creation
[DRE 86] might have been such first steps or at least early steps in the process of creation.
Figure 1.1.The creation of meaning for NEST in a hermeneutic circle, including its stimulus
The illustration makes it clear how great an influence such initial steps can have by decisively molding the ensuing debate and that in the hermeneutic circle these steps can only be gradually modified by alternative suggested meanings. On the other side of the image, so to speak as the output of the hermeneutic circle at a certain point in time, are the real consequences (section 1.2), for example with regard to funding for research or shaping the social debate. Clarification of the workings of the hermeneutic circle, in particular of its beginnings, is therefore a central task for us to be able to discuss the real output in as transparent a manner as possible, for instance, in the framework of public debates.
It is interesting to observe that the concept of hermeneutics – the study of understanding and meaning themselves – has been mentioned from time to time, although not frequently, in the RRI debate in the last few years. Probably, this is neither a coincidence nor simply a passing fashion. On the contrary, the use of the word “hermeneutics” signifies a growing accumulation of knowledge and diagnoses that have been obtained from technology assessment (TA), science, technology and society studies (STS studies), sociology of expectations [VAN 93], applied ethics and the philosophy of technology in working with the new and emerging sciences and technologies. This result is especially the consequence of studies of techno-visionary projections of the future [NOR 07a, SEL 08, FER 12] putting more emphasis on the meaning of these projections as expressions of today’s diagnoses, perceptions, expectations, attitudes, hopes and fears instead of interpreting them as anticipations of what the future will or might bring. In particular, the word “hermeneutic” has been used in the following contexts:
– reinterpreting the nature of futuristic visions
: the idea that visions could anticipate future worlds that we would have to prepare ourselves for was reinterpreted to be the question as to what these visions say
about us today
[GRU 14b]. This reinterpretation, which was the result of a discussion about vision assessment [GRU 09b, FER 12], has turned attention to understanding techno-visionary futures as a means of preparing a diagnosis
of the present
;
– understanding instead of predicting
: the expectation that technology assessment is supposed to predict future developments more or less precisely, as is mentioned over and over again, frequently cannot be realized, especially in the field of NEST. Qualitative understanding must come first. Helge Torgersen [TOR 13] sees a hermeneutic task of technology assessment in analyzing NEST;
– attributing meaning to new areas of technology
: Simone van der Burg [VAN 14b] sees visionary futures as a means of giving sense and meaning to NEST, such as via the visionary embedding of technical developments in future social constellations. This production of meaning, not the anticipation of future developments, is the primary function of uncertain and speculative futures according to van der Burg.
While these references seem to be more or less isolated, they will be used as points of departure to expand them in this book in order to enable a more systematic study of hermeneutic questions in the NEST debates. The hermeneutic approach to better understand processes and contents of assigning meaning to new technology will add meta-information to the RRI debates about the techno-visionary futures dealt with there and about the processes of definition and characterization of NEST developments. This meta-information includes information about the respective current world in which the techno-visionary futures are created and communicated, but not statements about the future as a coming reality. The hermeneutic turn [GRU 14b] changes the perspective: understanding the meanings of techno-visionary futures leads us back to the present. It is this meta-information that heightens a debate’s reflection and transparency and thus helps make the debate open and unbiased in the sense of a deliberative democracy. Similarly, a hermeneutic analysis of processes of defining and characterizing NEST should help uncover the background of present diagnoses and perceptions motivating these proposals.
This perspective, based on the normative ideal of a deliberative democracy in the field of designing and governing the development and use of new technology, claims to add new accents to the RRI debate so far. It is based on the five above-mentioned observations that serve as questions or hypotheses guiding the analyses and argumentation presented in this book. Briefly, they may be summarized here as the major starting points:
1)
The attribution of meaning
to new technology plays a large role in the NEST debates and in the respective deliberation processes and controversies [VAN 14b]; subjects of RRI debates are not new technologies
as such
but are rather sociotechnical meanings assigned to them.
2)
Techno-visionary futures
and other types of narratives of the future constitute a major medium of assigning meaning to new technology; they usually
cannot anticipate
future developments but fuel
current and ongoing
debates and controversies to form opinions and make decisions today.
3) Debates
on the definition and characterization
of NEST are highly relevant to assigning not only scientific and technological but also ethical and social meaning to them and should thus be included in a hermeneutic enlightenment of the emergence of meaning.
4)
Orientation
for society and decision makers is needed because the assignment of meaning may have major consequences despite the lack of knowledge about expectable future consequences.
5) The
hermeneutic perspective
will investigate and uncover these meanings in order to increase transparency, expecting
that democratic deliberation and argument-based reasoning
will benefit.
This means that we are required, not merely entitled, to reflect conceptually and methodologically on the creation and attribution of meaning in the RRI debates on NEST fields. The identification of two major origins of the production and assignment of meaning – techno-visionary futures, on the one hand, and approaches to define and characterize new fields of science and technology, on the other hand – has structural consequences for this book. Both roots of meaning will be described conceptually in more detail their dedicated chapters (Chapters 3 and 4), while the case studies on various NEST fields (Chapters 5–8) will address both tracks by applying a hermeneutic perspective.
The book extends the state-of-the-art concerning the hermeneutic perspective on futures and definitions of NEST, and their use by different actors in conceptual and methodological terms adds several new aspects to the RRI debate, and will motivate further lines of exploration and reasoning in this direction. As the first monograph on the hermeneutic side of RRI and its accompanying NEST-related debates, it will bundle and focus research done so far, provide insights by applying a more comprehensive and comparative perspective and give orientation for further research on NEST-related techno-visionary communication.
1.2. The need for orientation in NEST fields
This book – which is by all means theoretically oriented, as shown by the issues it pursues – ultimately owes its origin to practical interest. The backdrop for this is the practical claim of technology assessment, for which I stand [GRU 09a], as well as that of RRI to provide orientations that are based on knowledge and research in order that research and innovation can be conducted in a responsible manner and lead to ethically and socially good results [VON 13, VAN 13a]. With this goal and obligation in mind, the observations made above show that their realization requires a deeper look at the processes of creating and attributing meaning to developments in NEST. Both the philosophically motivated questions as to meanings and their provenance, on the one hand, and the theory-driven and empirically underpinned answers, on the other hand, remain fundamentally tied to a practical interest in pursuing knowledge: the objective is to improve the prospects for RRI to meet the expectations placed in practical orientation. In order to underpin this primacy of practice, I will initially specify the central arguments as to why orientation is at all necessary in the field of NEST.
NEST developments are by definition at an early stage of development (section 1.3) and still strongly rooted in basic research. Does it make any sense at all to demand public debate on such topics and to expect political and social orientation? Should we not instead let scientists doing basic research continue their research? Are the positive and negative visions linked to them anything more than simple speculation? Are the rudiments of definitions and characterizations anything more than conventions that serve bureaucrats to manage the new phenomena and do not contribute anything to the issue itself?
Thus, it is not a matter of course at all that orientation beyond basic research is needed. One could argue that many NEST debates are so speculative that they are hardly of any practical consequence, as suggested by some arguments in the context of speculative nanoethics [NOR 07a]. It might accordingly be interesting in an abstract philosophical but merely academic sense to discuss some obviously speculative questions, such as overcoming death. There might be some interest in circles of intellectuals or in the feuilletons of magazines. Yet, in view of the speculative nature of those questions, serious concern was expressed that the intellectual effort and the resources spent might be completely irrelevant in a practical sense [NOR 09]. Also the effort spent on defining and scoping processes (Chapter 4) might be regarded as driven by mere academic interest without any practical consequences. However, this argumentation is misleading [GRU 10a].
While futuristic visions and other types of techno-futures ranging from high expectations to apocalyptic fears are often more or less fictitious in content in the NEST fields, such stories about possible futures can and often do have a real impact on scientific and public discussions [SEL 08]. Even a picture of the future lacking all facticity can influence debates, the formation of opinion, acceptance and even decision making [GRU 07a] in at least two ways [GRU 13a]:
– techno-futuristic stories and images can change the way we perceive current and future developments of technology, just as they can change the prospects of future societal constellations. Frequently, the societal and public debate about the opportunities and risks associated with new types of technology revolves around those stories to a considerable extent, as has been the case in the field of nanotechnology (see
Chapter 5
) [SCH 06] and as is still the case in human enhancement (see
Chapter 7
) [COE 09]. Visions and expectations motivate and fuel public debate because of the impact the related narratives may hold for everyday life and for the future of important areas of society, such as military, work and health care. Furthermore, they are related to cultural patterns [MAC 10]. Positive visions can contribute to fascination and public acceptance and can also attract creative young scientists to engage themselves there, just as negative visions and dystopias can cause concern and even mobilize resistance as was feared in particular in the early debate on nanotechnology [GRU 11b];
– techno-futures exert a particularly great influence on the scientific agenda which, as a consequence, partly determines what knowledge will be available and applicable in the future [DUP 07]. Directly or indirectly, they influence the views of researchers and, thus, ultimately also exert influence on political support and research funding. For example, even the speculative stories about improving human performance [ROC 02] quickly aroused great interest among policy makers and research funders [NOR 04, COE 09]. Projections of future developments based on NEST expectations therefore might heavily influence decisions about the support and prioritization of scientific progress and the allocation of research funds, which then will have a real impact on further developments.
In this context, I can draw on some practical experience gained in recent years which indicates that policy makers are well aware of the factual power of techno-visionary communication and are seeking policy advice in the areas involved. As an early example: a chapter about techno-visionary communication on human enhancement, converging technologies (nano-bio-info-cogno convergence) and other far-reaching visions compiled by the Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag (TAB) was very well received by members of the Bundestag as part of a comprehensive TA study on nanotechnology [PAS 04]. The authors came to the conclusion that this techno-visionary discourse played an important and to some extent new role in the governance of science and technology at least in civilian research and development, while also entailing new challenges for TA. Interestingly, several policy makers and also experts in nanoscience and nanotechnologies communicated to the TAB team, or even publicly commented, that they found the study’s discussion of futuristic visions and description of the networks promoting them very useful. The TAB team’s initial concerns that discussing these often far-fetched visions in a study that would become an official document of the parliament and an influential early publication on nanotechnology could cause irritations thus proved to be unfounded [GRU 11b]. Subsequently, TAB was requested to conduct several other projects to explore various issues in the field of converging technologies in more detail: studies on the politics of converging technologies at the international level [COE 08a], on brain research [HEN 07], on pharmacological and technical interventions for improving performance [SAU 11] and on synthetic biology [SAU 16]. Recently, the ceremony of the 25th anniversary of the foundation of TAB in 1990 was – upon request of members of parliament – dedicated to the issue of blurring the lines between humans and technology, e.g. by developments toward human enhancement and autonomous robots.
The interest of policy makers in techno-visionary futures is also evident at the European level, where NEST developments have been addressed by a fairly large number of projects (see, for example, Coenen et al. [COE 09] on human enhancement) and other advisory activities such as the reflections on nanotechnology, synthetic biology and ICT implants conducted by the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies [EGE 05]. The situation is much the same in the United States (see, for example, the work done by the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues [PRE 10]). Thus, demand for policy advice on NEST developments is evident, and a large number of respective studies have been delivered over recent years to meet this demand.
Definitions of nanotechnology, synthetic biology and the meaning of the word “autonomous” in autonomous robot systems have long been topics of controversy. We can learn from these and other stories about definitions that the definition and characterization of new technological developments are by no means a purely academic activity for simply creating order. On the contrary, definitions and characterizations play a decisive role in determining the nature of what is new. Yet, whether something is classified as radically new or as something developing bit by bit out of something familiar has immediate consequences for the social attribution of meaning. Definitions and characterizations as well as futures can also be distinctly influential (see Chapter 4) because such associations are often directly linked with associations of meaning. For example, whether the genetic modification of organisms is categorized as a new type of biotechnology without any role models in human history or as the further development of breeding techniques can have consequences for the course of social debates and lead to controversies that definitely also have something to do with the meaning of NEST.
The practical purpose of this book can be summarized as putting the spotlight on the beginnings of the hermeneutic circle of reaching an understanding on the meaning of NEST developments (see Figure 1.1). It is at these initial stations of the attribution of meaning that far-reaching decisions with possible path dependencies are made that can (or are supposed to) limit the diversity of alternatives in the subsequent RRI debates. The interest in clarifying these origins that stems from democratic theory consists of the fact that attributions of meaning can have real consequences (see above), that they are aligned with power, and, in view of the possible far-reaching consequences of NEST, that they should be the object of a transparent democratic debate. To make this possible is the purpose of the hermeneutic perspective.
An open, democratic discussion of visionary sciences and technologies and their possible meanings is a prerequisite for a constructive and legitimate approach to shaping the future research agenda, regulations and research funding. The factual significance and power of visions, on the one hand, and of definitions, on the other hand, for the governance of science and in public debates are a strong argument in favor of the necessity of providing early public and policy advice in the NEST fields. Policy makers and society should know more about these positive or negative visions, their genesis and their background, as well as about implications of definitions and characterizations. The postulate to open the “black box” of the creation and assignment of meaning and to make the implicit explicit is supported by calls for a more democratic governance of science and technology [SIU 09]. Its realization requires uncovering meanings, values and interests hidden in the techno-futures and communicating proposals of definition. Thus, gaining a comprehensive understanding of the meaning of the NEST developments under consideration forms the necessary basis for reflecting on responsibility and is an indispensable part of RRI processes (see Chapter 2). Because the use of techno-futures to assign meaning to lines of techno-scientific developments is a social process of construction carried out by many actors, full understanding of the (often contested and debated) meanings of techno-futures necessarily includes knowledge about the strategic actor constellation in which the respective assignments of meaning were made. Something similar holds for the various and in parts competing and controversial attempts to give adequate descriptions of the new fields and to work toward a meaningful and operable definition which should be as clear as possible.
Thus, the main purpose of the hermeneutic approach proposed in this book is a practical one in the tradition of technology assessment [GRU 09a]: it aims to support or even enable an open and transparent democratic debate on RRI during the early stages of development by providing a specific kind of knowledge and orientation [GUS 14a].
1.3. Short propaedeutic
The notions of NEST developments (section 1.3.2) and techno-visionary (section 1.3.3) futures being central to one of the meaning-creating processes need a propaedeutic clarification. These clarifications are preceded by a brief introduction of the crucial notion of meaning itself (section 1.3.1).
1.3.1. The meaning of “sociotechnical meaning”
The subject area of this book is the sociotechnical meaning of NEST developments as the topic of RRI debates. Initially, the word “meaning” refers to understanding. The object is to examine how meanings originate and what influence they have on science and technology debates. Corresponding to the first observation at the beginning of the chapter (section 1.1), NEST fields only become interesting for RRI debates when such sociotechnical meanings are involved. It is not the fields of science and the area of technology as such that are the subject of such debates, but rather their sociotechnical meanings. These, in turn, can consist of connections between scientific-technical projections into the future, on the one hand, and social developments, on the other hand, or express themselves in definitions and characterizations of these fields. At a conceptual level, the book is dedicated to understanding the creation and the communication of these sociotechnical meanings.
From this perspective, the book forms part of the meanwhile comprehensive literature on science and technology in which they are no longer viewed as something external to society but from the beginning as inherent components of society. Concepts such as the coevolution of technology and society [BIJ 94] or socially embedded technology [WOO 14] and talk about sociotechnical transformations of infrastructures [GEE 02] stand for this integrative view, just as does talk of “science in society” instead of “science and society” [SIU 09].
The concept of “meaning” can be further unfolded from the perspective of language pragmatics. Meaning is then not abstract, but must always be made more precise as the meaning of something (object) for someone (addressee) in a specific context. It is only in this constellation that it is possible to ask about the arguments for specific attributions of meaning. This also makes it clear that meaning is not an ontological quality that is objectively linked to its object, but that meaning is attributed by using arguments. The concept of meaning thus stands – just as, for example, that of responsibility (Chapter 2) – in a social and communicative context in which arguments for attributions are expected but can also be controversial. Hermeneutics is the art of understanding meanings and the processes of the attribution of meaning and has to be, as such, conceived in an interdisciplinary manner (see Chapter 9).
1.3.2. NEST: new and emerging science and technologies
The notion of NEST refers to several new lines of scientific research and development of the past approximately 20 years, such as nanotechnology, synthetic biology, enhancement technologies, robotics, the different “omics” technologies and climate engineering. They have in common several aspects, of which three are of particular significance for the subject of this book: (1) NEST developments blur the classical boundary between science and technology and lead to the emergence of technoscience; (2) NEST developments provide enabling technologies with only little knowledge about future consequences; (3) particular communication patterns have evolved around NEST areas:
1) The scientific-technological development of the past decades has made the traditional boundaries between technology and the sciences more permeable. One example is that technical interventions in the sphere of molecular biology have led to genetic engineering, which can be understood as a classical (natural) science but as technology as well. This observation led to the notion of
technoscience
[LAT 87, IHD 09] describing recent developments in science and engineering as overcoming traditional boundaries. This diagnosis also applies to synthetic biology [KOL 12]. In particular, it has consequences for the assignment of responsibility because the traditional boundary between technology-oriented applied science and cognition-oriented basic research is disappearing. While traditionally basic research is confronted with expectations to take over responsibility only for the research process itself but not for possible later outcomes in terms of technology and innovation, the situation in applied science is different. Because its target is to develop knowledge to be used and applied, e.g. in technology, the reflection on responsibility issues related to those applications intimately belongs to applied research. Following the diagnosis of NEST fields being
technosciences
belonging to both areas gives rise to the question of an adequate distribution of responsibilities specifically regarding this situation and of a specific NEST-ethics approach [RIP 07];
2) NEST developments lead to
enabling technologies
. Their aim is not to create products and innovations in specific areas of application, but they are open for a multitude of applications in greatly differing fields. They enable these applications. For example, nanotechnology was regarded as an enabling technology [FLE 08]. There are some original nanotechnology products such as nanoparticles for medical applications. But in many more cases, a nanotechnology component will be a decisive part of a much more complex product where the nano content might not be identified or recognized easily. These products are and will continue to be increasingly used in a number of fields, such as energy technology, information and communication technology or biotechnology. For many nano-enabled technologies, it therefore might become increasingly problematic to attribute their consequences to nanotechnology (alone). Another example is synthetic biology. Despite the fact that it is predominantly laboratory research which raises fundamental questions far away from concrete application, there are great promises of some protagonists of synthetic biology to create artificial organisms, to produce biomass or novel materials [BEN 05]. However, the feasibility and realization period of these visions are difficult if not impossible to assess. This is a general property of NEST: their “enabling” character is linked with a wealth of possible futures that are epistemologically very difficult to assess (
Chapter 3
);
3) It is precisely the futures that are difficult to assess (e.g. the techno-visionary futures) that lead to a specific form of communication: high to extremely high expectations, on the one hand, but just as dramatic anxieties, on the other hand, make these types of technology candidates for hope, hype and fear. They are believed to have the potential to solve global problems (hope), they are associated with far-reaching visions of the future and with over-reaching expectations (hype), and because of their impacts that are difficult to foresee and even less to control they raise concerns no matter whether they are well founded or not (fear). Therefore, these technologies attract a high degree of public and political attention, which might have huge impact on opinion forming and decision making (
section 1.2
).
These three characteristics of NEST developments are obviously central to the topic of this book. They influence the issue of defining new developments and are linked to the emergence of techno-visionary futures in scientific, social and political debates.
1.3.3. Techno-visionary futures
Since the industrial revolution and the success of the mobile and consumer society that is dependent on technology and innovation, modern society has pursued its further development primarily in the medium of technology. This scientific and technological progress and the opportunities tied to it as well as its limits, setbacks and unintended consequences are frequently a topic of social debate. These in turn mold the activity of development in the engineering sciences and become part, for instance, of the conception of a more sustainable society. Social futures are frequently sociotechnical images of the future, e.g. in the form of visions and utopias of nanotechnology or as futures of the energy supply. They enter social debates; initiate, structure and frame communication over opportunities and risks; and influence the public’s perception of technology, research funding and political decisions. Even early ideas on new types of technology depend on evaluation, and evaluations depend on conceptions of future developments – goals, potentials, scenarios, risks, etc. – in the context of the respective type of technology. They have to work with technology futures. Technology futures thus constitute a frame of reference both for assessments and for the basic approaches to design in the most diverse fields, from philosophy to engineering sciences.
These technology futures can be very different in nature, such as energy scenarios, technology road maps, visions or even plans. Techno-visionary futures are at the focus of this book with its interest in the attribution of meaning to NEST. In the past decade, there has been a considerable increase in visionary communication on future technologies and their impacts on society. In particular, this has been and still is the case in the fields of nanotechnology [SEL 08, FIE 10], human enhancement and the converging technologies [ROC 02, GRU 07a, WOL 08a], synthetic biology [SYN 11] and climate engineering [CRU 06]. Visionary scientists and science managers have put forward far-reaching visions, which have been disseminated by mass media and discussed in science and the humanities. I will call them techno-visionary futures [GRU 13a].
