In this succinct yet ample work, Zhao Tingyang as one of China's most distinguished and respected intellectuals, provides a profoundly original philosophical interpretation of China's story. Over the past few decades, the question "where did China come from?" has absorbed the thoughts of many of China's best historians. Zhao, keenly aware of the persistent and pernicious asymmetry in the prevailing way scholars have gone about theorizing China according to Western concepts and categories, has tasked both Chinese and Western scholars alike (...) to "rethink China." To this end, Zhao introduces what he terms a distinctively Chinese centripetal "whirlpool" model of world order to interpret the historical progression of China's "All-Under-Heaven" Tianxia identity construction on the central plain of China. In this book, Zhao forwards a novel and compelling thesis on not only how we should understand China, but also until recently, how China has understood itself. (shrink)

Tianxia--conventionally translated as "all-under-Heaven"--in everyday Chinese parlance simply means "the world." But tianxia is also a geopolitical term found in canonical writings that has a deeper historical and philosophical significance. Although there are many understandings of tianxia in this literature, interpretations within the Chinese process cosmology generally begin with an ecological understanding of intra-national relations that acknowledge the mutuality and interdependence of all economic and political activity. This volume contextualizes the tianxia vision of geopolitical order within (...) a variety of strategies drawn from a broad spectrum of cultures and peoples: Buddhist, Islamic, Indian, African, Confucian, European. The conversation among the contributors is guided by several central questions: Is tianxia the only model of cosmopolitanism? Are there ideas and ideals comparable to tianxia that exist in other cultures? What alternative perspectives of global justice have inspired Western, Indian, Islamic, Buddhist, and African cultural traditions? The fundamental premise here is that in order for a planetary tianxia system to be relevant and significant for the present time and for our vision of the future, it must acknowledge the plurality of moral ideals defining the world's cultures while at the same time seek practical ways to formulate a minimalist morality that can provide the solidarity needed to bring the world's people together. (shrink)

As an idealist form of realism, or realist form of idealism, the system of ‘All-under-Heaven’ seeks to find a rational and optimal solution to the problem of political conflict. Howeve...

The Confucian doctrine of _tianxia_ outlines a unitary worldview that cherishes global justice and transcends social, geographic, and political divides. For contemporary scholars, it has held myriad meanings, from the articulation of a cultural imaginary and political strategy to a moralistic commitment and a cosmological vision. The contributors to _Chinese Visions of World Order_ examine the evolution of tianxia's meaning and practice in the Han dynasty and its mutations in modern times. They attend to its varied interpretations, its relation (...) to realpolitik, and its revival in twenty-first-century China. They also investigate tianxia's birth in antiquity and its role in empire building, invoke its cultural universalism as a new global imagination for the contemporary world, analyze its resonance and affinity with cosmopolitanism in East-West cultural relations, discover its persistence in China's socialist internationalism and third world agenda, and critique its deployment as an official state ideology. In so doing, they demonstrate how China draws on its past to further its own alternative vision of the current international system. Contributors. Daniel A. Bell, Chishen Chang, Kuan-Hsing Chen, Prasenjit Duara, Hsieh Mei-yu, Haiyan Lee, Mark Edward Lewis, Lin Chun, Viren Murthy, Lisa Rofel, Ban Wang, Wang Hui, Yiqun Zhou. (shrink)

This article offers a critical overview of a set of normative theories, namely Tianxia 天下 (all-under-heaven), whose purpose is to provide a renewed conceptual framework for the improvement of the world system. First, the article introduces the origins, main features, and differences within Tianxia, before discussing two major criticisms leveled against it. The article then argues that the most powerful parts of these criticisms come from the challenges posed against Tianxia’s legitimacy. The article elaborates on this (...) and introduces two additional challenges of the same kind which were not discussed before. While the article leaves open the question of whether Tianxia is a realistic utopia, it insists that meaningful discussion of Tianxia must take legitimacy challenges seriously. It ends with a discussion concerning whether China can be understood as a civilization-state and how this understanding affects Tianxia’s reception as a realistic utopia. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: The Myth or Elegy of Artificial Intelligence by Tingyang ZhaoXuejian Zhou (bio)Rengongzhineng de shenhua huo beige 人工智能的神話或悲歌 ( The Myth or Elegy of Artificial Intelligence). By Tingyang Zhao 趙汀陽. Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2022. Pp. 155. Hardcover RMB68, isbn 978-981-16-7749-6. In recent years, the philosophy of artificial intelligence has undoubtedly become one of the most popular topics. There is a vague viewpoint suggesting that Chinese philosophy (...) might face challenges in addressing the philosophical issues posed by artificial intelligence. However, compared to the past, when discussing Chinese philosophy today, we must acknowledge the significant impact of modern technology. While the contemporary world does indeed witness clashes of civilizations, individuals from various civilizations share a common predicament: their close entanglement with modern technology. Regarding the future of Chinese philosophy, it becomes crucial to direct our attention towards modern advancements like artificial intelligence and the diverse range of issues they introduce. In light of this context, Zhao Tingyang's 趙汀陽 new book, The Myth or Elegy of Artificial Intelligence, presents us with a fresh perspective. In this book, Zhao primarily delves into the philosophical issues surrounding Super Artificial Intelligence, a subject regarded as both a metaphysical and a political problem. This notion refers to artificial intelligence that surpasses general artificial intelligence in terms of functionality, and possesses self-consciousness. Therefore, "myth" refers to the myth of the emergence of Super Artificial Intelligence disrupting people's subjectivity, giving rise to a new myth of artificial intelligence. Conversely, the term "elegy" embodies the crisis in human destiny that stems from such profound changes, which will lead to an ontological revolution in human existence. This suggests that within the narrative of artificial intelligence's myth, there lies the elegy of humanity (p. 4). The intricate interplay between these two realms of myth and elegy vividly showcases the value of Chinese philosophy. The book consists of a total of ten chapters. In Chapter 1, Zhao initially presents a thought-provoking question. With the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence humanity is faced with a novel ontological event, where the existence of artificial intelligence could potentially jeopardize human existence. This presents an ontological problem of "de-existence" (p. 8). As current artificial intelligence remains within the domain of the Turing machine concept and lacks subjectivity, it cannot effectively engage in matters involving self-correlation or [End Page 1] infiniteness. However, if artificial intelligence evolves into a super Turing machine endowed with subjectivity and free will, it could gain the capacity to modify its own programs and societal norms based on its needs or maximal benefits. This scenario introduces the possibility of a crisis in human existence, where the very existence of humanity is put at risk (pp. 17-23). In Chapter 2, Zhao analyzes the safety conditions of artificial intelligence and proposes the need to establish self-destruct mechanisms for Super Artificial Intelligence to ensure the status of human existence (pp. 34-38). Interestingly, in this context, Zhao connects artificial intelligence with the concept of Tianxia 天下 ("all under heaven"), implying that in order to control capital and power, the world needs a new form of politics, namely, a Tianxia 天下 system. Tianxia 天下 represents a world system that ensures world peace and the shared interests of people in a multicultural context, a non-exclusive system defining the world beyond any particular entity. According to Zhao, only a Tianxia 天下 system can manage the technological risks of the world (p. 39). Theoretically (hopefully in practice as well), a significant application of the Tianxia 天下 system would be to use global authority to limit any high-risk behaviors. Based on the first two chapters, it becomes apparent that the dangers related to artificial intelligence do not lie in its current capabilities, but in its potential for self-consciousness. For this reason, in Chapter 3, Zhao analyzes this issue further. In his view, once artificial intelligence possesses the ability for self-reflection, it will become possible for it to transform its own system and create new rules. Especially if artificial intelligence invents a universal language of its own, equivalent to human natural language, then all program systems could be reinterpreted, reconstructed, and redefined using this universal language (pp. 47-52). Furthermore, if... (shrink)

Tianxia and renlei mingyun gongtongti are two Chinese concepts that are of significance for reflecting on ‘China and Global Development.’ Both present a revival of cosmopolitanism in China, while a...

Devant les désordres du monde d’aujourd’hui, il existe au sein du confucianisme chinois un courant qui tente, dans les termes traditionnels du tianxia, « tous sous le ciel », d’esquisser les contours d’un nouvel ordre du monde et d’un horizon soutenable pour l’avenir. En le rapportant aux perspectives marxistes, cet article s’efforce de dégager ses motifs essentiels et de décrypter les termes du débat auquel il donne lieu. Quels enseignements parvient-il à dégager de cette philosophie millénaire? Est-il à comprendre (...) comme une alternative au marxisme? Ou bien serait-il capable de se repenser autour d’une critique de l’impérialisme? L’article interroge en ce sens un auteur contemporain significatif, Zhao Tingyang. (shrink)

The terminology tianxia has both historical evolution and cultural and philosophical connotations. This concept not only denotes a geographical and spatial meaning, but also implies the moral construct of metaphysics. A systematic study of its historical and cultural repercussions can show that the evolution of the meaning "tianxia" not only embodies the cosmological construction, moral belief and self-identity of the Chinese nation, but also manifests the historical processes of modern China evolving from "tianxia" to a modern nation-state. (...) Meanwhile, the deconstruction of the tianxia cosmology has shattered the old Chinese concept of a single united tianxia, or the whole world under one Heaven. Also, "Confucian China" has been increasingly losing its vitality and strong hold on the people, while the concept of nation-state has gained its way into people's consciousness, which has added more diversity and open-mindedness to the concept of tianxia. (shrink)

ABSTRACT There are two views on the nature of Chinese nationalism. The one view treats Chinese nationalism as political nationalism while the other recognises it as cultural nationalism. This paper argues that Chinese nationalism had been deeply shaped by Confucianism, which has two important and influential concepts of nationalism: tianxia天下and yi-xia夷夏. These two concepts reflect the two facets of Confucian nationalism. With the first facet, manifested in the concept of tianxia, Confucianism emphasizes cultural identity and the pursuit of a (...) kind of benevolent politics; the second facet, manifested in the concept of yi-xia, stresses political identity. As in Mencius, the concept of nationalism is based on his theory of human nature and self-cultivation, and the self-identity of a politician is transformable between the two levels of the yi-xia distinction, along with his self-cultivation. Thus, Confucian nationalism is based on self-cultivation, rather than self-identity. (shrink)

Here, for the first time, development studies encounters the set of ideas popularly known as 'Chaos Theory'. Samir Rihani applies to the processes of economic development, ideas from complex adaptive systems like uncertainty, complexity, and unpredictability. Rihani examines various aspects of the development process - including the World Bank, debt, and the struggle against poverty - and demonstrates the limitations of fundamentally linear thinking in an essentially non-linear world.

In this reply to James H. Fetzer’s “Minds and Machines: Limits to Simulations of Thought and Action”, I argue that computationalism should not be the view that (human) cognition is computation, but that it should be the view that cognition (simpliciter) is computable. It follows that computationalism can be true even if (human) cognition is not the result of computations in the brain. I also argue that, if semiotic systems are systems that interpret signs, then both humans and computers are (...) semiotic systems. Finally, I suggest that minds can be considered as virtual machines implemented in certain semiotic systems, primarily the brain, but also AI computers. In doing so, I take issue with Fetzer’s arguments to the contrary. (shrink)

1 Einleitung: Die konstruktivistische Herausforderung strukturgenetischer Subjekttheorien........................................................ 11 1. 1 Sozialisationstheorie - jenseits der groBen Entwiirfe......................................... 17 1. 2 Der genetische Strukturalismus im Kontext theoretischer Leitunterscheidungen................................................................................ ....... 20 1. 3 Konstitution als Problemstellung...................................................................... 27 2 Strukturgenetischer und radikaler Konstruktivismus........................... 33 2. 1 Die Erkenntnistheorie des Radikalen Konstruktivismus vor dem Hintergrund einer interaktionistischen strukturgenetischen Theoriestrategie.................................................................................... ........... 36 2. 1. 1 "Realitat" und "Wirklichkeit"........................................................................... 37 2. 1. 2 Konstruktivitat und AuBenwe1t: Piaget und von Glasersfeld............................. 41 2. 1. 3 Abgeschlossenheit, Rekursivitat und strukturelle Koppelung........................... 46 (...) 2. 2 Aquilibration und Adaption - Die differenztheoretische Ausgangslage des strukturgenetischen Konstruktivismus Piagets..................... 51 2. 3 Differenzerfahrung und die Entstehung des Neuen........................................... 54 2. 4 Der Status strukturgenetischer Fragestellungen vor dem Hintergrund des radikalen Konstruktivismus.................................................... 57 3 Soziale Konstitutions- und Systemtheorie.............................................. 62 3. 1 Die soziale Konstitutionshypothese.................................................................. 64 3. 2 Sprachzentrismus und Regelontologie.............................................................. 70 3. 3 Sinn als Grundbegriffund die Eigenstiindigkeit des Sozialen.......................... 72 3. 4 Das Problem der doppelten Kontingenz........................................................... 76 3. 5 Interpenetration und strukturelle Koppelung.................................................... 84 3. 6 Differenz und Identitat in der System- und sozialen Konstitutionstheorie......... 89 3. 7 Zwischenbilanz und Konsequenzen fur die Konzeption des Anfangsproblems 92 5 4 Die Konstitution der Subjekt-Objekt-Differenz: Das grundlegende Bezugsproblem des interaktionistischen Konstruktivismus...................................... 97 4. 1 Die Subjekt-Objekt-Differenzierung im genetischen Strukturalismus Piagets.................... 100 4. 1. 1 Die Ausgangskonstellation............................................ 102 4. 1. 2 1m Reich der Metaphem: Die Rolle der AuBenwelt und der Akkommodation........................................................................ 106 4. 1. 3 Die primaren und sekundaren Zirkularreaktionen im Blick des radikalen Konstruktivismus........................................................ III 4. 1. 4 Die Ausbildung der Subjekt-Objekt-Gegenlage.......................................... (shrink)

Dass Edmund Husserl am Problem der Intersubjektivität gescheitert ist, gilt als ausgemacht - und ebenso, welche Konsequenzen daraus zu ziehen sind. Entgegen dem allenthalben pauschal erklärten `Abschied vom Subjekt' spricht aber vieles dafür, dass es in der gegenwärtigen Sozialtheorie eher um eine Reformulierung transzendentaler Subjektivität geht. Diese Interpretationsthese wirft ein neues Licht auf den sozialtheoretischen Diskurs, der im deutschen Sprachraum in den vergangenen dreissig Jahren vom Gegensatz von Jürgen Habermas' und Niklas Luhmanns Theorien bestimmt war: `Diskurs' und `System' erscheinen (...) als gegensätzliche Versuche, `Subjektivität' und `Interität' in ein theoretisch befriedigendes Verhältnis zu setzen. Wenn aber - so die kritische These dieses Buches - weder die Reformulierung von Subjektivität als `Interität' noch die Reformulierung von Subjektivität ohne `Interität' das Problem der Intersubjektivität überzeugend löst, ist dies ein Grund, neuerlich in eine direkte Auseinandersetzung mit Husserls Theorie transzendentaler Subjektivität einzutreten. Dabei stellt sich heraus, dass Husserls vielkritisierter und -skandalisierter Versuch, den Sinn `Anderer' im `Eigenen' zu fundieren, in der transzendentalphänomenologischen Subjekttheorie durch ein umgekehrtes Begründungsverhältnis konterkariert wird. Bei aller Problematik dieser Theorieanlage - welche nur in Gegenwendung zu den Gewohnheiten der Husserl-Interpretation, vor allem aber auch zu Husserls Selbstinterpretation in den Blick kommt - zeigt sich, dass der phänomenologische Begriff des transzendentalen Subjekts seinen Reformulierungen als Diskurs und als System in mancher Hinsicht überlegen ist. (shrink)

Food retailers are powerful actors of the agro-industrial food system. They exert strong lock-in effects that hinder transitions towards more sustainable agri-food systems. Indeed, their marketing practices generally result in excluding the most sustainable food products, such as local, low-input, small-scale farmers’ products. Recently in Belgium, several initiatives have been created to enable the introduction of local products on supermarket shelves. In this article, we study three of those initiatives to analyse if the development of local sourcing in supermarkets (...) opens up an opportunity for a transition towards more sustainable agri-food systems. We conceptualise transitions as a shift in governance and ethical values and adopt a pragmatist approach of ethics combined with the systemic perspective of transition studies, to evaluate the impact of these initiatives. Our analysis shows that they mainly contribute to the reproduction of the incumbent agri-food system. It also highlights that first, to be a driver for sustainability transitions, food ethics need to be systemic i.e. relate to a systemic understanding of problems and perspective of sustainability, including social justice. And second, it highlights that governance arrangements involving not only representative organisations of the various agri-food and non-agricultural actors, but also actors upholding ethical values that are currently missing in conventional supply chains and representing excluded and marginalised interests, favour the uptake of such systemic ethics by incumbent actors. Hence, systemic ethics and inclusive governance are key features for initiatives to contribute to a sustainability transition. (shrink)

According to the standard view in philosophy, intentionality is the mark of genuine action. In psychology, human cognition and agency are now widely explained in terms of the workings of two distinct systems (or types of processes), and intentionality is not a central notion in this dual-system theory. Further, it is often claimed, in psychology, that most human actions are automatic, rather than consciously controlled. This raises pressing questions. Does the dual-system theory preserve the philosophical account of intentional (...) action? How much of our behavior is intentional according to this view? And what is the role of consciousness? I will propose here a revised account of intentional action within the dual-system framework, and we will see that most of our behavior can qualify as intentional, even if most of it is automatic. An important lesson will be that philosophical accounts of intentional action need to pay more attention to the role of consciousness in action. (shrink)

Die Frage, ob «systematische» Philosophie heute noch möglich ist, wird in der Gegenwartsphilosophie kontrovers diskutiert. Sie ist eng verknüpft mit dem Thema «Vernunft und Wirklichkeit». Der Sammelband System der Philosophie? dokumentiert Aspekte dieser Debatte durch Beiträge einer internationalen Autorenschaft.

There is contrast to the belief that all energy and matter came into existence after the Big Bang. If we wish to understand the way the Greeks and other philosophers view our environment, we need to study the data that was collected by them. This book sees our portrayal of reality as having its departure point in concrete systems by which means of conceptual systems result in abstracted systems. This data must be sorted and information must now be surveyed, structured, (...) and analysed to find qualities and connections between the different aspects systems thinking. This has led to the theory for 'Living Systems'. It gives examples of applications which a basis for further studies of systems can be formed. The Internet now provides a major advantage to the retrieval of statistical information and opens a means for the future exploration and verification of how systems work. (shrink)

Minimizing the costs that others impose upon oneself and upon those in whom one has a fitness stake, such as kin and allies, is a key adaptive problem for many organisms. Our ancestors regularly faced such adaptive problems (including homicide, bodily harm, theft, mate poaching, cuckoldry, reputational damage, sexual aggression, and the infliction of these costs on one's offspring, mates, coalition partners, or friends). One solution to this problem is to impose retaliatory costs on an aggressor so that the aggressor (...) and other observers will lower their estimates of the net benefits to be gained from exploiting the retaliator in the future. We posit that humans have an evolved cognitive system that implements this strategy – deterrence – which we conceptualize as a revenge system. The revenge system produces a second adaptive problem: losing downstream gains from the individual on whom retaliatory costs have been imposed. We posit, consequently, a subsidiary computational system designed to restore particular relationships after cost-imposing interactions by inhibiting revenge and motivating behaviors that signal benevolence for the harmdoer. The operation of these systems depends on estimating the risk of future exploitation by the harmdoer and the expected future value of the relationship with the harmdoer. We review empirical evidence regarding the operation of these systems, discuss the causes of cultural and individual differences in their outputs, and sketch their computational architecture. (shrink)

The paper discusses how systems biology is working toward complex accounts that integrate explanation in terms of mechanisms and explanation by mathematical models—which some philosophers have viewed as rival models of explanation. Systems biology is an integrative approach, and it strongly relies on mathematical modeling. Philosophical accounts of mechanisms capture integrative in the sense of multilevel and multifield explanations, yet accounts of mechanistic explanation have failed to address how a mathematical model could contribute to such explanations. I discuss how mathematical (...) equations can be explanatorily relevant. Several cases from systems biology are discussed to illustrate the interplay between mechanistic research and mathematical modeling, and I point to questions about qualitative phenomena, where quantitative models are still indispensable to the explanation. Systems biology shows that a broader philosophical conception of mechanisms is needed, which takes into account functional-dynamical aspects, interaction in complex networks with feedback loops, system-wide functional properties such as distributed functionality and robustness, and a mechanism’s ability to respond to perturbations. I offer general conclusions for philosophical accounts of explanation. (shrink)

Systems biology is a vigorous and expanding discipline, in many ways a successor to genomics and perhaps unprecendented in its combination of biology with a ...

Germany's leading contemporary social theorist provides a definitive analysis of art as a social and perceptual system which not only represents an important intellectual step in discussions of art but also an important advance in systems theory. Luhmann insists on the radical incommensurability between psychic systems (perception) and social systems (communication). Art is a special kind of communication that operates at the boundary between the social system and consciousness in ways that profoundly irritate communication while remaining strictly internal (...) to the social. Each chapter elaborates a particular aspect of the general problem of art's status as a social system. The book draws on a vast body of research in the social sciences, phenomenology, evolutionary biology, cybernetics, and information theory, combined with an intimate knowledge of art history, literature, aesthetics, and contemporary literary theory. The book also engages virtually every major theorist of art and aesthetics from Baumgarten to Derrida. (shrink)

D'Holbach believed that the misery he saw in mankind around him was caused by religion and its superstitious beliefs - that there was a God who controlled destiny and would reward and punish individuals. The System of Nature was written to replace these delusions with a schema of understanding based solely on the physical workings of nature.

From its genesis in the 1960s, the focus of inquiry in neuroscience has been on the cellular and molecular processes underlying neural activity. In this pursuit neuroscience has been enormously successful. Like any successful scientific inquiry, initial successes have raised new questions that inspire ongoing research. While there is still much that is not known about the molecular processes in brains, a great deal of very important knowledge has been secured, especially in the last 50 years. It has also attracted (...) the attention of a number of philosophers, some of whom have viewed it as evidence for a ruthlessly reductionistic program that will eventually explain how mental processes are performed in the brain in purely molecular terms. As neuroscience developed, however, there emerged a smaller group of researchers who focused on systems, behavioral, and cognitive neuroscience. These investigators have also made impressive advances in the last 50 years and they have been the focus of an even larger group of philosophers, who have appealed to systems level understanding of the brain as providing the appropriate point of connection to the information processing accounts advanced in psychology. (shrink)

This article tackles the theories of global justice whose “Chinese-style” cosmopolitanism is espoused by the notion of tianxia 天下. Specifically, I first examine the Chinese-style cosmopolitanism driven by the reinterpretation of tianxia. In doing so, I claim that it retains the very fallacy that can be found in liberal cosmopolitanism in failing to provide us with a regulative principle through which different justifications for justice can be steered toward a democratic deliberation between states. Second, through analyzing Dialogue on (...) Mount Uisan by Hong Daeyong 洪大容, I explore an alternative conception of tianxia in which all countries are placed on an equal footing rather than in a hierarchy. Finally, putting forward the ethics of differences in Dialogue on Mount Uisan, I will suggest a principle of reciprocity in which non-domination as a regulative principle can help better establish a discursive stance between states without a central hegemon. (shrink)

Das System der Disponibilitätshierarchien versucht in der Rechtsphilosophie eine neue Perspektive zu eröffnen, indem speziell das Phänomen der Disponibilitätssetzung und seiner Auswirkungen auf die Umgangsmöglichkeiten und Urteilsmacht des Menschen in der Gesellschaft betrachtet wird. Die Disponibilitätshierarchie der Umgangsmöglichkeit und die Disponibilitätshierarchie der Urteilsmacht dienen dem Aufbau eines neuen Freiheitsbegriffes. Mit der Darstellung des Aufbaus der Statikexistenziale und der Dynamikexistenziale begründet das Werk einen neuen Freiheitsbegriff und überschreitet damit die Grenze der Rechtsphilosophie hin zur Allgemeinphilosophie. In der antiken und in (...) der klassischen Philosophie wurde Freiheit zumeist als Möglichkeit, in der absoluten Daseinsform aufzugehen, verstanden. Kant hat die Möglichkeit der absoluten Eigenursächlichkeit eines gedanklichen Ereignisses für den Folgegedankengang und Ereignisablauf als transzendentale Freiheit verstanden und als notwendige Bedingung der konkreten praktischen Freiheit, die er Selbstautonomie nannte, angesehen. Die moderne Philosophie sieht zumeist in der größtmöglichen materiellen und ideellen Ungebundenheit die Freiheit, die negative Freiheit als Freiheit von Zwängen ist. In diesem Buch wird herausgearbeitet, daß Freiheit ambivalent erstrebt wird durch den Aufbau von Statik- und Dynamikexistenzialen. Der Autor, geb. 1969, absolvierte ein Studium der Rechtswissenschaft an der Universität Freiburg im Breisgau und unternahm darüber hinaus Studien zur Allgemeinphilosophie. Er ist derzeit Rechtsreferendar am Landgericht Freiburg. (shrink)

Background There are intense discussions about the ethical and societal implications of biomedical engineering, but little data to suggest how scientists think about the ethics of their work. The aim of this study is to describe how scientists frame the ethics of their research, with a focus on the field of molecular systems engineering.Methods Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted during 2021–2022, as part of a larger study. This analysis includes a broad question about how participants view ethics as related to (...) their work, with follow up probes about the topics they consider most important. Interviews were transcribed, inductively coded by two researchers to consensus, and analyzed thematically.Results Twenty-four scientists participated in the study. Interviewees hold positions as professors, principal investigators, and senior staff researchers in universities or research institutes in the United States and Europe. Among those scientists who reported reflecting on ethical considerations in their work, many equated ethics with research ethics topics (e.g., safety, replicability), or with regulation and guidelines. Participants expressed the view that ethical issues are primarily relevant for clinical trials of bioengineered products, or for those working with animal or human subjects. Scientists described their research as “too early” or “not examining anything living” with regard to ethical reflection. Finally, many felt that ethics is seen as territory for experts and therefore beyond scientists’ competencies.Conclusions Molecular systems engineering scientists currently focus on regulatory aspects as the framework for their ethical analyses. They describe using a framework to define when life arises, as a means to determine when further ethical engagement is warranted. Further research is needed to investigate how scientists relate to the ethics of their scientific work, and build consensus around concepts of life, autonomous behavior, and physiological relevance of bioengineered systems. (shrink)