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Biotechnology, Controversy and the Philosophy of Technology

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Food and Agricultural Biotechnology in Ethical Perspective

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Abstract

This concluding chapter situates the previous 13 chapters in the book within themes in the philosophy of technology. I begin by asking how philosophy could contribute to the controversy over biotechnology, through critique and or defense of this new suite of tools and techniques. The chapter continues by discussing how two key themes in the book—the focus on agriculture and the risk-based approach—could enrich the work of other philosophers working on Technoscience. Themes on the ontology of risk are given particular emphasis, and the arguments in the previous chapters are developed as an extension of Don Ihde’s postphenomenology. The chapter concludes by summarizing themes from The Spirit of the Soil (Thompson in The spirit of the soil: agriculture and environmental ethics. Routledge, New York, 2017) and indicating how the previous chapters in this book relate to a more general philosophical analysis of agricultural research.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Paul B. Thompson

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Correspondence to Paul B. Thompson .

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Thompson, P.B. (2020). Biotechnology, Controversy and the Philosophy of Technology. In: Food and Agricultural Biotechnology in Ethical Perspective. The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics, vol 32. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61214-6_14

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