Biotechnology, disagreement and the limitations of public debate

Bernice Bovenkerk

Biotechnology, disagreement and the limitations of public debate

in Ethics and the politics of food

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Bernice Bovenkerk

Bernice Bovenkerk University of Melbourne, Currently linked to the Ethics Institute, University of Utrecht, Heidelberglaan 2, 3584 CS Utrecht, The Netherlands, bernicebovenkerk@yahoo.com.au

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Art:: Kapitel

Seiten:: 95–102

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.3920/9789086865758_015

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In discussions about the merits of biotechnology we are faced with a diversity of opinions and attitudes, giving rise to persistent disagreements. I distinguish six different sources of disagreement, which correspond to different levels of ‘fundamentality’; the more basic the values and worldviews that specific arguments appeal to, the more fundamental the disagreement is, and the more likely it is to become intractable. This could be one reason why the biotechnology debate tends to revolve around more pragmatic issues, such as the safety of GMOs and the need for labelling, while other issues, especially those of a more metaphysical nature, remain in the background. Appeals to more fundamental concerns are often left out of public debate, because it is argued that in a pluralistic society we will never be able to reach agreement on these. However, I want to argue that limiting public debate about biotechnology to less fundamental levels of disagreement, does injustice to the biotechnology controversy, because it misrepresents the actual way in which participants in the debate reach their positions on biotechnology. To a certain extent all the different categories of disagreement are based on moral viewpoints − as they all have evaluative aspects − and on a deeper level they can be traced to specific worldviews and metaphysical views. We would be abstracting from the wider reasons that move people, if we limited the debate to less fundamental issues. More importantly, framing the biotechnology debate solely in less fundamental or pragmatic terms is inherently biased, because it tends to favour pro-biotechnology standpoints.

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Ethics and the politics of food

Preprints of the 6th Congress of the European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics

ISBN:: 9789086865758

Verleger:: Wageningen Academic

Print-Publikationsdatum:: 10 Oct 2006

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Biotechnology, disagreement and the limitations of public debate

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Ethics and the politics of food

Preprints of the 6th Congress of the European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics

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