Concept
Bioconservatism
Overview
Bioconservatism is a philosophical and ethical stance that emphasizes caution and restraint in the use of biotechnologies, particularly those involving genetic manipulation and human enhancement.
Bioconservatism is characterized by a belief that technological trends risk compromising human dignity, and by opposition to movements and technologies including transhumanism, human genetic modification, "strong" artificial intelligence, and the technological singularity. Many bioconservatives also oppose the use of technologies such as life extension and preimplantation genetic screening.
Bioconservatives range in political perspective from right-leaning religious and cultural conservatives to left-leaning environmentalists and technology critics. What unifies bioconservatives is skepticism about medical and other biotechnological transformations of the living world. In contrast to bioluddism, the bioconservative perspective typically presents a more focused critique of technological society. It is distinguished by its defense of the natural, framed as a moral category.
Critics of bioconservatism, such as Steve Clarke and Rebecca Roache, argue that bioconservatives ground their views primarily in intuition, which can be subject to various cognitive biases. They consider bioconservatives to be unable to provide concrete reasons to justify their intuitions, contributing to stalled debate around human enhancement.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
It is suggestive that European philosophy originated (among the Athenians) under the direct pressure of educational questions. The earlier history of philosophy, developed by the Greeks in Asia Minor and Italy, so far as its range of topics is concerned, is mainly a chapter in the history of science rather than of philosophy as that word is understood to-day. It had nature for its subject, and speculated as to how…
John Dewey, Democracy and Education
States what Bioconservatism is.
To sum up, those who are concerned only with the functional activity of the living being are inclined to believe that physics and chemistry will give us the key to biological processes.[18] They have chiefly to do, as a fact, with phenomena that are _repeated_ continually in the living being, as in a chemical retort. This explains, in some measure, the mechanistic tendencies of physiology. On the contrary, those…
Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution
Close in meaning to Bioconservatism; the term itself is not named.
A preservative of opinion formed by law in a course of education about things dreadful, as to their nature and quality; and I called it a constant preservative, because one retains it both in pains and pleasures, desires and fears, and never casts it off; and, if you please, I will liken it to what I think it closely resembles. Pray do.
Plato, The works of Plato
Close in meaning to Bioconservatism; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
- Francis Fukuyama
- Genetic engineering
- Intuition
- Jürgen Habermas
- False dilemma
- Immortality
- Life extension
- Environmentalism
- Autonomy
- Obligation
- Humility
- Speciesism
- Transhumanism
- Nick Bostrom
- Virtue
- Technological singularity
- Consequentialism
- Michael Sandel
- Artificial general intelligence
- Ethics
- Leon Kass
- Jeremy Rifkin
- Ethics and Public Policy Center
- Discourse ethics
Place in the tradition
Part of Conservatism.