Jean-Pierre Béland

TL;DR: A framework for the analysis of impacts and acceptability is presented and intended to make explicit those various operations required in preparing a judgement about the acceptability of technologies that have been implicit in the classical analysis of toxicological risk.

TL;DR: An analysis of the factors that contribute to confusion and discord on the topic are advanced, in order to help in understanding why arguments that form a part of the debate between transhumanism and humanism result in a philosophical and ethical impasse.

TL;DR: There are no settled proceedings for ethics in HTA nor consensus on the role of ethical theory and ethical expertise hindering its integration, and it is hypothesized that there exists interdependence between the three issues studied and that value judgments could be their linking concept.

TL;DR: Identifying the different categories of argument and the moral stance that underlies each category will enable a better grasp of the reasons for the multiplicity of the arguments that figure in discussions of the acceptability of nanotechnologies and will contribute to overcoming the tendency towards talking past each other that all too often disfigures the exchange.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyze the reasons behind the prevailing individual and cultural relativism in ethics and show how philosophy can accompany and support the development of nanotechnologies from a pragmatic perspective.