Overview
Pioneering attempt to ground global ethics in a specific context, that of nanotechnology
Highly interdisciplinary integrative approach to ethics combining narrative ethics, policy, public discourse, sociology and identity and multicultural concepts
Explains a comparative global view of a key technology - nanotechnology
The combination of Habermasian ethics and pTA is a new approach
There is very little currently on the market on Chinese debates on nanotechnology and nothing on pTA in China
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Table of contents (8 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This book addresses questions surrounding the feasibility of a global approach to ethical governance of science and technology. The emergence and rapid spread of nanotechnology offers a test case for how the world might act when confronted with a technology that could transform the global economy and provide solutions to issues such as pollution, while potentially creating new environmental and health risks. The author compares ethical issues identified by stakeholders in China and the EU about the rapid introduction of this potentially transformative technology – a fitting framework for an exploration of global agency.
The study explores the discourse ethics and participatory Technology Assessment (pTA) inspired by the work of Jürgen Habermas to argue that different views can be universally recognized and agreed upon, perhaps within an ideal global community of communication. The book offers a developed discourse model, utilizing virtue ethics as well as the work of Taylor, Beck, Korsgaard and others on identity formation, as a way forward in the context of global ethics. The author seeks to develop new vocabularies of comparison, to discover shared aspects of identity and to achieve, hopefully, an ‘intercultural personhood’ that may lead to a global ethics.
The book offers a useful guide for researchers on methods for advancing societal understanding of science and technology. The author addresses a broad audience, from philosophers, ethicists and scientists, to the interested general reader. For the layperson, one chapter surveys nanoissues as depicted in fiction and another offers a view of how an ordinary citizen can act as a global agent of change in ethics.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Dr Sally Dalton-Brown is the Dean of Trinity College, The University of Melbourne. She has published widely on global literature and philosophy.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Nanotechnology and Ethical Governance in the European Union and China
Book Subtitle: Towards a Global Approach for Science and Technology
Authors: Sally Dalton-Brown
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18233-9
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Business and Economics, Economics and Finance (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-18232-2Published: 24 June 2015
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-36630-2Published: 09 October 2016
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-18233-9Published: 03 June 2015
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XII, 227
Topics: R & D/Technology Policy, Ethics, Philosophy of Technology