Technology and Responsibility pp 135-150 | Cite as
Increasing Responsibility as Technological Destiny? Human Reproductive Technology and the Problem of Meta-Responsibility
Abstract
Responsibility refers to the consequences of human actions, especially to the bad consequences, as far as we have control over them. Responsibility, therefore, presupposes (a) that the bad consequences could have been foreseen, i.e., that the acting person has enough empirical knowledge to be able to anticipate the outcome of his or her action; and (b) that it would have been possible to avoid these bad consequences either by renouncing the action or by modifying its execution in such a way that they do not occur. The first presupposition indicates the cognitive or theoretical limits of our responsibility; the second, its practical or technological limits.
Keywords
Human Life Human Nature Moral Norm Moral Rule Human ReproductionPreview
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Notes
- 1.Joseph Fletcher, The Ethics of Genetic Control: Ending Reproductive Roulette ( Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974 ), pp. 40f.Google Scholar
- 2.Ibid., pp. 5f.Google Scholar
- 3.George H. Kieffer, Bioethics: A Textbook of Issues ( Reading Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979 ), p. 132.Google Scholar
- 4.J. Fletcher, op. cit., p. xiv.Google Scholar
- 5.Ibid., p. 13.Google Scholar
- 6.Cf. Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer, “The Moral Status of the Embryo,” in W. Walters and P. Singer, eds., Test-Tube-Babies: A Guide to Moral Questions, Present Techniques and Future Possibilities ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1982 ), p. 60.Google Scholar
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- 9.Genesis 38: 1–11 tells about the prohibition of coitus interruptus; Genesis 16: 1–16 and 30: 1–21 reports several cases of surrogate motherhood.Google Scholar
- 10.Quoted by John L. Morgan in “The Created Individual: Are Basic Notions of Humanity Threatened?” in W. Walters and P. Singer, eds., Test-Tube Babies (note 6, above), p. 92.Google Scholar
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- 16.Jacques Monod, “On Values in the Age of Science,” in A. Tiselius, ed., The Place of Values in a World of Facts (Stockholm: Almquist and Wiksell, 1970), pp. 24–25 and 27.Google Scholar
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