Across the European research area and beyond, efforts are being mobilized to align research and innovation processes and products with societal values and needs, and to create mechanisms for inclusive priority setting and knowledge production. A central concern is how to foster a culture of “Responsible Research and Innovation” (RRI) among scientists and engineers. This paper focuses on RRI teaching at higher education institutions. On the basis of interviews and reviews of academic and policy documents, it highlights the generic aspects (...) of teaching aimed at invoking a sense of care and societal obligation, and provides a set of exemplary cases of RRI-related teaching. It argues that the Aristotelian concept of phronesis can capture core properties of the objectives of RRI-related teaching activities. Teaching should nurture the students’ capacity in terms of practical wisdom, practical ethics, or administrative ability in order to enable them to act virtuously and responsibly in contexts which are often characterized by uncertainty, contention, and controversy. (shrink)

In 1968, Jürgen Habermas claimed that, in an advanced technological society, the emancipatory force of knowledge can only be regained by actively recovering the ‘forgotten experience of reflection’. In this article, we argue that, in the contemporary situation, critical reflection requires a deliberative ambiance, a process of mutual learning, a consciously organised process of deliberative and distributed reflection. And this especially applies, we argue, to critical reflection concerning a specific subset of technologies which are actually oriented towards optimising human cognition. (...) In order to create a deliberative ambiance, fostering critical upstream reflection on emerging technologies, we developed the concept of a mutual learning exercise. Building on a number of case studies, we analyse what an MLE involves, both practically and conceptually, focussing on key aspects such as ambiance and expertise, the role of ‘genres of the imagination’ and the profiles of various ‘subcultures of debate’. Ideally, an MLE becomes a contemporary version of the Socratic agora, providing a stage where multiple and sometimes unexpected voices and perspectives mutually challenge each other, in order to strength-en the societal robustness and responsiveness of emerg-ing technologies. (shrink)

Across the European research area and beyond, efforts are being mobilized to align research and innovation processes and products with societal values and needs, and to create mechanisms for inclusive priority setting and knowledge production. A central concern is how to foster a culture of “Responsible Research and Innovation” among scientists and engineers. This paper focuses on RRI teaching at higher education institutions. On the basis of interviews and reviews of academic and policy documents, it highlights the generic aspects of (...) teaching aimed at invoking a sense of care and societal obligation, and provides a set of exemplary cases of RRI-related teaching. It argues that the Aristotelian concept of phronesis can capture core properties of the objectives of RRI-related teaching activities. Teaching should nurture the students’ capacity in terms of practical wisdom, practical ethics, or administrative ability in order to enable them to act virtuously and responsibly in contexts which are often characterized by uncertainty, contention, and controversy. (shrink)

Neuroenhancement involves the use of neurotechnologies to improve cognitive, affective or behavioural functioning, where these are not judged to be clinically impaired. Questions about enhancement have become one of the key topics of neuroethics over the past decade. The current study draws on in-depth public engagement activities in ten European countries giving a bottom-up perspective on the ethics and desirability of enhancement. This informed the design of an online contrastive vignette experiment that was administered to representative samples of 1000 respondents (...) in the ten countries and the United States. The experiment investigated how the gender of the protagonist, his or her level of performance, the efficacy of the enhancer and the mode of enhancement affected support for neuroenhancement in both educational and employment contexts. Of these, higher efficacy and lower performance were found to increase willingness to support enhancement. A series of commonly articulated claims about the individual and societal dimensions of neuroenhancement were derived from the public engagement activities. Underlying these claims, multivariate analysis identified two social values. The Societal/protective highlights counter normative consequences and opposes the use enhancers. The Individual/proactionary highlights opportunities and supports use. For most respondents these values are not mutually exclusive. This suggests that for many neuroenhancement is viewed simultaneously as a source of both promise and concern. (shrink)

Neuroenhancement involves the use of neurotechnologies to improve cognitive, affective or behavioural functioning, where these are not judged to be clinically impaired. Questions about enhancement have become one of the key topics of neuroethics over the past decade. The current study draws on in-depth public engagement activities in ten European countries giving a bottom-up perspective on the ethics and desirability of enhancement. This informed the design of an online contrastive vignette experiment that was administered to representative samples of 1000 respondents (...) in the ten countries and the United States. The experiment investigated how the gender of the protagonist, his or her level of performance, the efficacy of the enhancer and the mode of enhancement affected support for neuroenhancement in both educational and employment contexts. Of these, higher efficacy and lower performance were found to increase willingness to support enhancement. A series of commonly articulated claims about the individual and societal dimensions of neuroenhancement were derived from the public engagement activities. Underlying these claims, multivariate analysis identified two social values. The Societal/Protective highlights counter normative consequences and opposes the use enhancers. The Individual/Proactionary highlights opportunities and supports use. For most respondents these values are not mutually exclusive. This suggests that for many neuroenhancement is viewed simultaneously as a source of both promise and concern. (shrink)

Resumen: El presente artículo explora los rendimientos de la teoría de la justicia de Axel Honneth para comprender las experiencias del sujeto en las sociedades contemporáneas. Para esto primeramente define la teoría de la justicia a través de las esferas del reconocimiento y posteriormente construye un modelo analítico posible considerando la justicia social a través de grados. Se proponen tres grados de justicia, que no son camisas de fuerza a lo social, sino puntos de partida para pensar la constitución y (...) las prácticas de los sujetos. Se concluye que las esferas del reconocimiento, pensadas a través de grados de justicia social permiten analizar las disímiles experiencias de los sujetos, pero comprendiendo las esferas y finalmente la justicia, a la luz de relaciones de poder y dominación que configuran ciertos contenidos morales de la justicia, pero no necesariamente contenidos que favorecen un mayor progreso moral en los órdenes sociales que prevalecen. El modelo analítico presentado permite considerar cómo se institucionalizan órdenes morales que definen formas de justicia que coactan la crítica, la lucha y el cambio.: This article explores the performances of Axel Honneth’s theory of justice to understand the subject’s experiences in contemporary societies. For this, it first defines the theory of justice through the spheres of recognition and then builds a possible analytical model considering social justice through degrees. Three degrees of justice are proposed, which are not social straitjackets, but starting points for thinking about the constitution and practices of the subjects. It is concluded that the spheres of recognition, thought through degrees of social justice, allow to analyze the different experiences of the subjects, but understanding the spheres and finally justice in the light of relations of power and domination that configure certain moral contents of the justice, but not necessarily content that will favor greater moral progress in the prevailing social orders. The analytical model allows us to consider how institutionalized moral orders, which define forms of justice that coerce criticism, struggle and change. (shrink)

Resumen: Los estudios críticos en discapacidad se han convertido durante las últimas tres décadas en un campo académico interdisciplinario que introduce un camino plural y diverso para la comprensión de la discapacidad. Estos estudios se enfocan en una serie de desarrollos teóricos que privilegian las comprensiones culturales, discursivas y relacionales de la discapacidad, conectando las aspiraciones de las personas con discapacidad con las agendas de los estudios feministas, queer, poscoloniales, postestructuralistas y posthumanos. Este trabajo tiene como objetivo esbozar los aportes (...) epistemológicos de estos estudios a través de la identificación de ejes teóricos que se han ido consolidando: poder, producción de los cuerpos y opresión internalizada; interseccionalidad e identidades múltiples; y ensamblajes posthumanos. La contribución de estos ejes radica, por un lado, en la salida del binarismo discapacidad-impedimento propio de los estudios sociales de la discapacidad más convencionales, lo que permite comprender la variabilidad de experiencias de la discapacidad, y, por otro lado, hace entender el concepto discapacidad como estratégico para explicar las formas en las que se producen los sujetos en las sociedades actuales.: Critical disability studies have become over the last three decades an interdisciplinary academic field that introduces a plural and diverse path to understanding disability. These studies focus on a series of theoretical developments that privilege cultural, discursive, and relational understandings of disability, connecting the aspirations of people with disabilities with the agendas of feminist, queer, postcolonial, poststructuralism and posthuman studies. This work aims to outline the epistemological contributions of these studies through the identification of theoretical axes that have been consolidated: power, production of bodies and internalized oppression; intersectionality and multiple identities; and posthuman assemblages. The contribution of these axes lies on the one hand, in the departure from the disability-impediment binary characteristic of the more conventional social studies of disability, which allows us to understand the variability of experiences of disability, and, on the other hand, it makes disability concept strategic to explain the ways in which subjects are produced in current societies. (shrink)