The Ethical Discourse of Technoscience

The ethics of technoscience is complex in nature not only because it combines nanoethics, bio-ethics, information ethics, neuroethics, but also because it makes the problems of applied ethics providing the ethical reflection of technological innovations much broader, and makes philosophical ethics more complex by casting doubt on the ontological foundation of morality itself. The ethical discourse of technoscience is being formed. It integrates speculative studies of moral philosophy with the social practice of the humanities. The subject matter of technoscience ethics is not only the discussion and control of new technologies and practices, but also the identification and discussion of fundamental ethical, anthropological and ontological problems. The task of the ethos of technoscience is to predict the harmful and useful aspects of deployment. We can say that the essence of the ethos of technoscience in the moral regulation of the technosphere. The comparative analysis of such forms of technoscientific ethos as information ethics, bioethics, neuroethics, nanoethics has revealed that, in each case, researchers distinguish two patterns, defined as internal and external or micro- and macro-levels of normative ethical problems. Each of the considered forms of the ethos of technoscience is both a scientific discipline and a social practice. The critical function of technoscience ethos is associated with the assessment of the technological impact on the environment and humans. The philosophical context of technoscience ethics is associated with the need for a moral evaluation of the convergent technologies' impact on man and human nature. While traditional ethical teachings were based on metaphysical assumptions, this also applies to absolutist ethics based on a priori axioms of good and evil and utilitarian ethics which takes usefulness as a basis of a moral, the ethical discourse of techno-science is formed in a transdisciplinary field and is a form of social practice. Forms of activity such as social expert examination, responsible research and innovation (RRI), social assessment of technology, and deep ecology combine scientific research with various types of social practice. Here, science appears in a new humanistic dimension so that the developed technologies are in accordance with social values and ensure the sustainable development and survival of mankind. Based on the foregoing, the authors conclude that there is a significant modification of the ideal of the self-worth of scientific and technological innovations as the basic value of the anthropogenic civilization.

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