Ethical Issues for Food Biotechnology - A North America- Europe Comparison

哲学家们经常分析食品和农业生物技术辩论中的伦理问题，因为这些问题涉及对科学责任的不同理解之间的冲突。 有些观点强调对后果的预测;有些观点认为，科学行为和政府监管必须体现一套社会规则或个人和社区美德，而不管后果如何。 这种紧张关系贯穿于关于农业生物技术的环境影响、食品安全、动物保护和社会后果的辩论，以及关于知识产权规则的道德性和公众对科学的信任和信心的问题的辩论。 然而，许多问题仍然存在，是否道德问题的哲学帐户代表实际的外行人的关注，以及这些帐户是否有任何跨文化的有效性。 该项目将对这些伦理问题进行全面的哲学概述，并对其纳入非专业关注及其跨文化相关性进行审查。 开始，选择性的实证研究的公共文件和媒体代表的美国有关道德和食品生物技术的争议将进行分析和比较的哲学帐户。 比较将评估这些帐户是否代表放大的讨论外行人的信仰，如果他们作为替代词汇解释问题，或者如果他们在很大程度上是无关紧要的外行人的关注，（或者这三种可能性的某种组合）。 这项评估使用的结果，在美国的经验研究道德语言的形成对环境冲突的态度，以及大众媒体的作用，影响公众对风险的看法。 该项目还涉及与荷兰的研究人员开展合作，以便能够对荷兰和其他欧洲的哲学叙述和非专业人士的观点进行跨文化比较。 然后，可以比较美国和荷兰的辩论和辩论的哲学分析，以评估a）辩论本身是否相互一致，以及与各自的哲学分析一致;以及B）不同的文化伦理哲学方法本身如何创造不同的食品和农业生物技术伦理问题的概念化方式。 该研究将解决这个问题，将北美和欧洲的生物技术争议的分析，以哲学对话，并通过使用的演讲和媒体研究的实证分析，两者提出的问题，哲学和文化的各自的作用，在制定的辩论点。 该奖项有助于支持美国的研究部分，以及美国和荷兰研究团队之间的几次初步会议和探索。 如果进展顺利，该奖项的补充和延长可能允许在欧洲举办研讨会和后续研究活动。

Philosophers often analyze ethical issues in debates over food and agricultural biotechnology as involving conflicts between different understandings of scientific responsibility. Some views stress prediction of consequences; some, sets of social rules or personal and community virtues that must characterize scientific conduct and government regulation, irrespective of consequences. This tension runs through debates over environmental impact, food safety, animal protection, and social consequences of agricultural biotechnology, as well as in debates over the morality of intellectual property rules and questions about public trust and confidence in science. Yet, many questions remain as to whether philosophical accounts of ethical issues represent actual lay persons' concerns, and whether these accounts have any cross cultural validity. This project will produce a comprehensive philosophical overview of these ethical issues and subject it to scrutiny with respect to its incorporation of lay concerns and its cross cultural relevance. To begin, selective empirical studies of public documents and media representations of the US controversies concerning ethics and food biotechnology will be analyzed and compared with the philosophical accounts. The comparison will assess whether these accounts represent amplified discussions of lay persons' beliefs, if they serve as alternative vocabularies for interpreting issues, or if they are largely irrelevant to lay persons' concerns, (or perhaps some combination of these three possibilities). This assessment uses results from empirical research in the US on moral language in the formation of lay attitudes towards environmental conflicts, and on the role of mass media in affecting public perception of risk. The project also involves developing a collaboration with researchers in The Netherlands that will enable cross cultural comparison of Dutch and other European philosophical accounts and lay persons' views. The debates and philosophical analyses of debates from the US and the Netherlands could then be compared to assess a) whether the debates themselves are consistent with one another, and with the respective philosophical analyses of them; and b) how different cultural approaches to ethical philosophy may themselves create different ways of conceptualizing ethical issues in food and agricultural biotechnology. The research would address this question by placing a North American and a European analysis of biotechnology controversy into philosophical dialogue with one another, and by using the speech and media studies empirical analyses of both to ask questions about the respective roles of philosophy and culture in framing the points of debate. This award helps to support the US research component and several initial meetings and explorations between the US and Netherlands research teams. If progress warrants, a supplement and extension to the award may allow for a workshop in Europe and follow-on research activities.