Debasement of Life? A Critical Review of Some Conceptual and Ethical Objections to Synthetic Biology

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to review ethical points of criticism regarding conceptual implications of synthetic biology’s aim of constructing artificial life. (1) The methodological strategy of synthetic biology that is strongly shaped by an engineer’s approach fits in a paradigm of creating life in a productional manner. (2) This approach is taken by critics to mean the representation and reinforcement of an epistemically misguided reductionistic conception of life. Furthermore, by seeing life as a result of a technological process of production, a manipulative and instrumental approach might be predefined. Inevitably, the products of synthetic biology—which are alive by definition—would thereby be subject to a handling that doesn’t acknowledge any intrinsic value of life. Further, critics fear negative ethical impact on how life in general is understood and valued which, in turn, might have dubious effects on the self-conception of man. (3) As a critical review of these points of criticism shows, the outlined conceptual implications are neither as inevitable as feared nor do they necessarily lead to ethically dubious consequences. In particular, they do not automatically make synthetic biology an alarming biotechnology that demands increased caution. However, they do explain a certain unease that results from blurring the hitherto unalterable terminological and ontological boundaries.