Abstract
The following is a study in the interplay between the development of a special kind of technology and the emergence of public acceptance and consensus over its use. The case is that of human reproduction. The technology in question, unlike others, involves concepts of human identity and ethics. Other technologies may do that in indirect ways by transforming cultural patterns, but they usually do so in unanticipated and undetected fashion. In the case of technologies which directly involve humans, these effects are much more immediate and may even be part of the explicit objectives, even though their long range consequences may be little understood. One would expect that new technologies of this kind are more controversial from the outset and have a higher probability of being rejected. Their eventual acceptance involves mechanisms by which they become adapted to the ethical context, but they also transform this context.
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© 1994 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Weingart, P. (1994). Consensus by Default. In: Bayertz, K. (eds) The Concept of Moral Consensus. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 46. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0860-7_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0860-7_13
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