IB Philosophy 9.1.3 Philosophical Challenges Arising from Development of Technology Notes

Biotechnology and the Boundaries of Nature

1. As established in 9.1.1 and 9.1.2, technology is not merely a set of tools but a force that shapes human existence and social structures. This topic examines the specific philosophical challenges arising from three domains of contemporary technology: biotechnology, robotics, and information and communication technology (ICT).
2. Biotechnology raises fundamental questions about the relationship between technology and nature. Genetic engineering enables humans to modify the biological code of living organisms, including their own.
   1. This capacity challenges the boundary between the natural and the artificial that has structured philosophical thinking since Aristotle's distinction between techne (skilled making) and physis (the Greek word for nature, meaning things that grow and develop on their own).
3. Jurgen Habermas argued in The Future of Human Nature (2003) that genetic enhancement threatens moral autonomy, the basic condition that each person must be free to shape their own life. If parents engineer their child's traits before the child can consent, that freedom is violated from the very start.
   1. Habermas argued this creates an irreversible asymmetry (a one-way power gap) between designer and designed. This undermines the equal moral standing of persons that democratic societies depend on: the idea that no one was designed by someone else to serve their purposes.
   2. Imagine parents using preimplantation genetic diagnosis to select an embryo with genes associated with high intelligence and musical aptitude. Their child grows up to discover that her defining talents were chosen for her before she existed.
   3. Habermas argues this creates an irreversible asymmetry: the parents acted as designers, the child as designed, and no amount of later dialogue can undo that foundational inequality, because the modification cannot be reversed or refused after the fact.

Sandel and the Ethics of Enhancement

1. Michael Sandel raised a related concern in The Case Against Perfection (2007). He argued that the drive to genetically enhance human beings reflects a hyperagency — an obsessive desire to control everything — that misses the value of accepting life as a gift, with its randomness and limitations.
   1. By treating human characteristics as raw material for improvement, we lose the humility and solidarity that come from recognising the role of chance in shaping who we are.
   2. Consider two athletes: one trains relentlessly for years to shave seconds off her sprint time. The other achieves the same result through genetic modification of muscle fibres.
   3. Sandel argues the difference matters profoundly: the first athlete's achievement reflects effort, discipline, and the 'giftedness' of natural talent, while the second reflects an engineering project, and with it the virtues of humility (acknowledging what we cannot control) and solidarity (sharing a common human condition) begin to dissolve.
2. The therapy/enhancement distinction is philosophically contested. Treating a genetic disease (therapy) seems uncontroversial, but enhancing intelligence, athletic ability, or emotional resilience raises questions about fairness, identity, and human nature.
   1. If only the wealthy can afford genetic enhancements, biotechnology may create new forms of biological inequality more entrenched than any social hierarchy.

Nature, Cloning, and Jonas’s Ethics of Responsibility

1. Cloning and stem cell research challenge traditional concepts of individuality and reproduction.
2. If a genetically identical copy of a person can be created, what happens to the uniqueness of personal identity (discussed in 1.1.1)? Stem cell research raises questions about the moral status of embryos and the boundaries of what counts as a person.
3. How we answer these debates depends on how we understand nature. If nature is seen as a sacred or intrinsically valuable order, then biotechnology that alters it commits a transgression.
   1. If nature is understood as raw material for human purposes (as Heidegger warned in 9.1.1), then there are no principled limits to technological intervention.
4. Hans Jonas argued in The Imperative of Responsibility (1979) that modern technology demands a new ethics. Traditional ethics dealt with small-scale, immediate human interactions between people present in the same time and place.
   1. Biotechnology operates on a scale no previous ethics anticipated — altering the human genome, reshaping ecosystems. It demands an ethics of long-term responsibility that extends across generations and species, not just the people alive today.
   2. Apply Jonas's heuristics of fear to CRISPR gene drives, a technology that could alter the genetic makeup of entire wild populations, for example by rendering mosquitoes unable to carry malaria. The potential benefit is enormous, but the consequences are irreversible and global: once released, a gene drive cannot be recalled.
   3. Jonas would say that precisely because the worst-case scenario is catastrophic and permanent, the burden of proof falls on those who would proceed, not on those who urge caution.

Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Personhood

1. Robotics and artificial intelligence raise the question explored in 1.4.2: can machines be persons? As AI systems become more sophisticated, displaying capacities for learning, language use, and decision-making, the philosophical question of what distinguishes persons from machines becomes increasingly urgent.
2. Alan Turing proposed in 1950 that if a machine can engage in conversation indistinguishable from a human's, it should be considered intelligent. The Turing Test treats intelligence as a matter of observable behaviour rather than internal states.