Exploring the Non-empirical Underpinnings of Gene-editing
Abstract:
Using descriptive ethics and relational values, this paper explores the importance in the relationship between humans and nature which has often been absent from the literature and from Western philosophy. I use such a basis to examine a case study of gene-edited rice in Japan. I find that ethical relevance becomes evident through cultural significance, due to the potential changes to the cultural values ascribed to the relationship with nature. In this case, genetically editing rice may move one away from this relational value towards an instrumental value of nature, and seeing rice purely as a commodity. This consequence shows that it is indeed ethically relevant to see a distinction between natural and unnatural framings. Important elements of both nature and biotechnology are in fact thus not about the scientific aspects whose positions are not based in natural sciences- but the framings, morals, ethics, and interpretations of such concepts and the subsequent consequences of these in the socio-cultural realms of life.
Keywords: Culture, ethics, relations, gene-edit, rice, GMO, values, singularity, commodity, Japan