Bioethics and complexity. An appraisal of their relationships to other sciences
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Abstract: By and large, bioethics is concerned with life, i.e. understanding and explaining the living beings both as-they-are and as-they-could-be. The hard core here is global bioethics, which is a wider and richer domain than clinical bioethics. Global bioethics, it is claimed, stands very much along the way of the sciences of complexity – as an understanding of increasingly complex systems and behaviors. This paper explores the relationship between bioethics and complexity science. Thanks to such an appraisal a landscape appears additionally about the relationship with other sciences and disciplines. The hardcore for such interplay is the concern about life, i.e. the living beings. This paper argues that thanks to the interplay between bioethics and complexity theory, science and technology in general can harness from bioethics, and provides arguments about it. Firstly, it is shown that a right understanding of bioethics entails a distance with clinical bioethics. According to its very origins, bioethics is to be viewed as a sincere concern with life in general. Therefore, the developments from bioethics as a bridge on to global bioethics, and even to deep bioethics are shown and highlighted. This understanding impedes any reductionism of bioethics – which can be named here as “normal bioethics”. On this ground, complexity science is depicted in general terms, and a panorama of links and relations among bioethics and other sciences and disciplines is sketched. The main argument then goes that a solid even though basic understanding of life is needed in order to cope with the challenges and opportunities around us all. This, we claim, is both an ethical and an epistemological demand.
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