speculative ethics
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2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-111
Author(s):  
Ivo Minkov

The article interprets the methodological potential of Hegel’s speculative dialectics as a possible course of spiritual evolution of the Absolute subject. The intention is towards the method, first through the very construction of the “idea of freedom” from the point of view of Logic; second, through the constitutive function of freedom and the transition of the subjective spirit into the objective spirit; third, through the unfolding of mediation in the realms of the objective spirit. This essentially substantial methodologization dissolves the theoretical space of the idea of the mediating function of freedom as an ontological principle of ethical life. In line with the paradigm of such a course, the text considers a project of speculative ethics, a project within the framework of which the methodological and ontological sublation of spiritual evolution takes place.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie Smith

This paper discusses the role that algorithmic thinking and management plays in healthcare and the kind of exclusions this might create. We argue that evidence-based medicine relies on research and data to create pathways for patient journeys. Coupled with data-based algorithmic prediction tools in healthcare, they establish what could be called health algorithmics – a mode of management of healthcare that produces forms of algorithmic governmentality. Relying on a critical posthumanist perspective, we show how healthcare algorithmics is contingent on the way authority over bodies is produced and how predictive healthcare algorithms reproduce inequalities of the worlds from which they are made, centering possible futures on existing normativities regulated through algorithmic biopower. In contrast to that, we explore posthuman speculative ethics was a way to challenge understanding of “ethics” and “care” in healthcare algorithmics. We suggest some possible avenues towards working speculative ethics into healthcare while still being critically attentive to algorithmic modes of management and prediction in healthcare


Author(s):  
Christopher J. Preston

AbstractAdvances in gene reading, gene synthesis, and genome editing are making possible a number of radical new practices for transforming animal futures in the Anthropocene. De-extinction may make it possible to bring back lost species. Gene drives may enable the sending of desirable traits through wild populations of organisms. The hype accompanying these promises can make each of them look ethically irresistible. This chapter investigates the ‘speculative ethics’ that has arisen around these technologies, asking questions about both their viability and the approach to animals they contain. Reductive and non-relational thinking is identified as one potential problem with the thinking behind these techniques. The neglect of non-human agency is identified as another. After indicating some of the problems these two ways of conceptualizing an animal and its genome can create, a brief suggestion is made about how to better conceptualize animal futures in the Anthropocene.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Chao

Review of Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds, by María Puig de la Bellacasa (University of Minnesota Press, 2017)


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 630-641
Author(s):  
SVEN OVE HANSSON

AbstractWhat purpose can be served by empirically unsubstantiated speculation in ethics? In answering that question, we need to distinguish between the major branches of ethics. In foundational moral philosophy, the use of speculative examples is warranted to the extent that ethical principles and theories are assumed to be applicable even under the extreme circumstances referred to in these examples. Such an assumption is in need of justification, and it cannot just be taken for granted. In applied ethics, the use of unrealistic scenarios is more difficult to justify. It can be positively harmful if it diverts our attention from more urgent issues. Neuroethics is one of the areas of applied ethics where speculative scenarios have taken up much of the attention that could instead have been devoted to problems that are relevant for the treatment and care of patients. Speculative ethics has often been defended with mere possibility arguments that may at first hand seem difficult to refute. It is shown with examples how such claims can be defeated with a combination of science and argumentation analysis.


Minerva ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-69
Author(s):  
Kjetil Rommetveit ◽  
Niels van Dijk ◽  
Kristrún Gunnarsdóttir

Abstract This article is an analytic register of recent European efforts in the making of ‘autonomous’ robots to address what is imagined as Europe’s societal challenges. The paper describes how an emerging techno-epistemic network stretches across industry, science, policy and law to legitimize and enact a robotics innovation agenda. Roadmap is the main metaphor and organizing tool in working across the disciplines and sectors, and in aligning these heterogeneous actors with a machine-centric vision along a path to make way for ‘new kinds’ of robots. We describe what happens as this industry-dominated project docks in a public–private partnership with pan-European institutions and a legislative initiative on robolaw. Emphasizing the co-production of robotics and European innovation politics, we observe how well-known uncertainties and scholarly debates about machine capabilities and human–machine configurations, are unexpectedly played out in legal scholarship and institutions as a controversy and a significant problem for human-centered legal frameworks. European robotics are indeed driving an increase in speculative ethics and a new-found weight of possible futures in legislative practice.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew James Shapiro

“Care? Why should I care about care?” This question, raised by one of María Puig de la Bellacasa’s colleagues, is one that could be reasonably posed by any critical scholar. Care is, after all, a deeply fraught concept. Historically, the ideal of caretaking has been used to justify women’s domestic confinement and their lack of remuneration. More recently, it’s been coopted by corporations in their altruistic marketing strategies (think “CBS Cares” or “Chase Cares” or “Nordstrom Cares”). Taking seriously care’s ambivalent, non-innocent character, Matters of Care offers a praiseworthy posthumanist intervention into the politics of caring, working to recuperate care from the trappings of neoliberal biopolitics.


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