Abstract
Research on ethical, legal and social aspects (ELSA) of life sciences and new technologies has mainly been focused on impacts and consequences, while the emerging framework of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) focuses rather on increased involvement and reflexivity in research processes to foster science and technology that better answers the needs of society. I argue that philosophy of science should be a central feature of RRI and demonstrate how the philosophy of science can contribute in this sense. I show how investigating basic assumptions in research, here exemplified by reductive assumptions in causal modeling, can have important ethical and societal implications.
Highlights
Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is a framework for European research in new and emerging areas of science and technology that has been proposed as an alternative to the ELSA mode of addressing Ethical, Legal and Societal Aspects of new scientific developments
The pervading paradigm in medicine is, they suggest, reductionism in the sense that we typically focus on one factor as a disease cause or target for disease intervention
Freitas (1999), where we find nanomedicine portrayed as involving highly reductionist representations of biological systems and of human health and disease
Summary
Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is a framework for European research in new and emerging areas of science and technology that has been proposed as an alternative to the ELSA mode of addressing Ethical, Legal and Societal Aspects of new scientific developments. This paper is intended as a first demonstration of what philosophy of science research has to offer an RRI framework for nanomedicine with a focus on reductionist assumptions and choices in causal modeling.
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