Abstract
A brief overview of the ways synthetic biology is discussed in contemporary philosophical debate seems to justify the following hypothesis: this debate is initially motivated by moral questions. While these approaches are obviously valuable in our understanding of the ethical issues involved in these techno-scientific practices, it is also true that this bias has eclipsed other important aspects, specifically those related to a strict ontological discussion of what is really new about these entities produced by synthetic biology. In other words, the hidden question is whether these synthetic products are genuinely different – in ontological terms – from other products of previous modes of domestication or intervention in natural dynamics. This paper accordingly aims to examine certain ontological implications of synthetic biology, especially those related to the way it affects traditional dichotomies such as natural/artificial and organism/machine.
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Notes
- 1.
Synthetic biology, as Adrian Mackenzie claims, works under the assumption that biological space is “a flattened space of technical operations” (2010, p. 194).
- 2.
In a similar vein, Keekok Lee (2005) is concerned about the “ontological impoverishment” caused by current biotechnological practices. The implementation of the modern scientific/technological programme “leads inexorably to the increasing elimination of that dualised other. In this view, then, the dualism between human and non-human may finally liquidate itself, if science and technology can in principle systematically and at a deep level transform the natural into the artefactual. Such transformation also produces ontological impoverishment, which is an inevitable part of modern anthropocentrism”. (2005: 19)
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- 4.
It could be objected –from a Simondonian perspective– that these features do not really apply to genuine ‘machines’ or complex technical individuals, which behave progressively, through a ‘concretization’ process, like organisms at the level of self-regulation. However, the focus of this paper is not Simondon’s idea of technical objects, but rather the way synthetic biology conceptualizes the machine by means of the notion of ‘living machine’.
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Parente, D. (2018). Synthetic Life: Organisms, Machines, and the Nature of Synthetic Biology Products. In: Laspra, B., López Cerezo, J. (eds) Spanish Philosophy of Technology. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 24. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71958-0_3
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