Ethics and Epistemology of Nanotechnology - critically Mapping Current Approaches

What relationship can there be between a scale of – the nanometre – and ethical questioning? Of course, the breakthroughs in properties made possible by access to the nanometric scale promise new applications. Some already exist: nanoparticles to improve the performance of materials or the optical properties of cosmetics, inks and plastics. These pose problems of toxicity and ecotoxicity. In this case, why call for ethical reflection, rather than simply extending the scope of existing approaches to risk analysis and management? Other applications are expected in the future: molecular electronic components for smaller, faster computers, nanoprobes for molecule-sensitive diagnostic tests, targeted drugs, miniaturized sensor-actuators for pollution control, and so on. Most of this research is still at the nanoscience stage, referring to upstream research into the properties of matter on a nanometric scale. Their applications – nanotechnologies – will be transferred to industry in the more or less distant future, depending on their maturity and economic potential. But if these applications are likely to raise ethical questions, how are these questions specific to nanotechnologies? Are the various fields of applied ethics (information technology ethics, bioethics, environmental ethics, etc.) not sufficiently equipped to deal with them? Lastly, certain applications are the subject of anticipations foreshadowing a still distant future: ambient electronics, man-machine interfaces, artificial organs, nano-robots... "Nano-ethics" would then be essentially an approach to anticipating future impacts. However, by focusing on future applications, and consequently on impacts that are not yet proven and are in the realm of speculation, don't we run the risk of missing out on very real ethical issues that concern research today?

This article therefore seeks to approach the ethics of nanoscience and nanotechnology (NST) in a way that goes beyond the study of applications and their "potential" impacts. Rather than taking the "demand" for NST ethics as "natural" and self-evident, he presents it as a construct reflecting a political will. He argues that this construction must be both criticized and seized as an opportunity to rethink the practice of technology ethics.

This "constructed" character does not necessarily make the ethics of NST an "artifact" superimposed on a well-defined, factual reality. The specificity of NST is that they don't have one. Indeed, there is nothing to designate NST as a clearly defined new field of upstream basic science, or as a particular "technology" identifiable by its areas of application in industry. The criteria for a characterization – rather than a definition – of NST are to be found elsewhere, on two levels: in terms of political strategies, and...