Pig towers and in vitro meat: Disclosing moral worlds by design

Abstract

Technology development is often considered to obfuscate democratic decision-making and is met with ethical suspicion. However, new technologies also can open up issues for societal debate and generate fresh moral engagements. This paper discusses two technological projects: schemes for pig farming in high-rise agro-production parks that came to be known as ‘pig towers’, and efforts to develop techniques for producing meat without animals by using stem cells, labelled ‘in vitro meat’. Even before fully entering our world as actually realized systems or commercially viable products, these technologies disclosed societal concerns over animal agriculture. These concerns were expressed through active public responses and were informed by formal methods of assessment, such as applied ethics and lifecycle analysis. By closely examining how features of these designs entered public debates and ethical thought, we trace the moral world-disclosing character of technological projects. We find that these proposals generate occasions for debate and gather new societal actors to form new coalitions or rifts. Both technologies gave rise to particular understandings of societal issues. As the central means through which problems were discussed changed, new types of arguments were considered relevant and ontological shifts could even be seen to occur with what was considered ‘real meat’ and the ‘true nature’ of animal farming. We argue that world disclosing involves a renewed sense of the character of political and moral agency, whereby the sensibilities that constitute a moral subject are redefined. Finally, we explore the inner tensions and ambiguities of this process of moral and political change by confronting the notions of ‘world disclosure’ developed by Dewey and Heidegger, thereby connecting to recent debates within both STS and political theory on how to understand political processes in a technological culture

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

  • Only published works are available at libraries.

Similar books and articles

Vegetarian meat: Could technology save animals and satisfy meat eaters?Patrick D. Hopkins & Austin Dacey - 2008 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 21 (6):579-596.
The Ethics of Producing In Vitro Meat.G. Owen Schaefer & Julian Savulescu - 2014 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 31 (2):188-202.
Meat and Morality: Alternatives to Factory Farming. [REVIEW]Evelyn B. Pluhar - 2010 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 23 (5):455-468.
Moral Steaks? Ethical Discourses of In Vitro Meat in Academia and Australia.Tasmin Dilworth & Andrew McGregor - 2015 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 28 (1):85-107.
Technology as Responsibility: Failure, Food Animals, and Lab-grown Meat.Wyatt Galusky - 2014 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 27 (6):931-948.
Oryx and Crake and the New Nostalgia for Meat.Jovian Parry - 2009 - Society and Animals 17 (3):241-256.
Eating animals and the moral value of non-human suffering.Salim Hirèche & Sandra Villata - 2013 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 88 (1):247-256.
In Defense of Eating Meat.Timothy Hsiao - 2015 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 28 (2):277-291.

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-05-08

Downloads
6 (#1,269,502)

6 months
1 (#1,040,386)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?