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Anticipating ethical challenges: is there a coming era of nanotechnology?

Article Excerpt
Abstract. In this paper I question the claims made for a 'coming era of nanotechnology' and the ethical challenges, it is argued, that are entailed by this particular technological revolution. I argue that such futurist claims are sustained by an untenable modernist narrative which separates the technical and the social. This is exemplified by the work of K. Eric Drexler and his claim that whilst the course of scientific knowledge may remain unpredictable we nevertheless can predict with accuracy the trajectory of technology and particularly the emergence of nanotechnology. The problem then, on the basis of knowledge about the future state of technology, is to make choices now which will forestall unintended and undesirable consequences. Firstly, the paper argues for a radical scepticism towards all forms of forecasting or prediction but especially technological forecasting of the type exemplified in the debate around nanotechnology. Secondly, given this radical scepticism the paper criticises the idea that a prospective ethics can be created on the basis of an assessment of consequences of nanotechnology.

Key words: computer ethics, consequentialism, forecasting, futurology, nanotechnology, prediction

Introduction

Adam Ferguson, a leading figure amongst philosophers of the 18th century Scottish Enlightenment wrote in 1767 in An Essay on the History of Civil Society that:

"Mankind in following the present state of their minds, in striving to
remove inconveniences, or to gain apparent and contiguous advantages,
arrive at ends which even their imagination cannot anticipate ...
Every step and every movement of the multitude, even in what are
called enlightened ages, are made with equal blindness to the future,
nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed the result of
human action but not the execution of human design." (1)


Ferguson draws our attention to two salient claims, one is that human institutions arise as unintended consequence of social action rather than as a result of design. But also crucially how could this be otherwise given our 'blindness to the future'?

The argument to be developed in this paper is that what was true of the enlightened days of the 18th century is equally true of our own predicament. G.J. Warnock reminded us more recently of the limitations which circumscribe human action and their bearing on morality. The human predicament is characterised by, for example, limited resources, limited information, limited intelligence and most conspicuously limited rationality and limited sympathies. (2)

The fragility of our attempts to foresee the future is well captured by William A. Sherden. In The Fortune Sellers (1998) he casts a cold eye over a wide range of contemporary forecasting including economic prediction, weather forecasting, population forecasting, technology assessment, business planning, financial services, futurology and fortune telling. He concludes that:

"Of these 16 types of forecast, only two--one-day-ahead weather
forecasts and the aging of the population--can be counted on, the rest
are about as reliable as the 50-50 odds in flipping a coin. And only
one of the 16--short-term weather forecasts--has any scientific
foundation. The rest are typically based on conjecture, unproved
theory, and the mere extrapolation of past trends something no more
sophisticated than what a child could do with a ruler (or perhaps a
protractor)." (3)


In this paper I analyse the claims made for a 'coming era of nanotechnology' and some of the ethical challenges, it is argued, that are entailed by this particular technological revolution. The transition to the era of nanotechnology, if the claimants are right, will be a technological revolution even greater than the information technology and biotechnology revolutions. (4) My problem is how can we possibly know such claims to be true? Must we not rather acknowledge the limits of our abilities to understand and control the world when trying to shape our ethical responses?

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