The methodological rigor of anticipatory bioethics

Excerpt

The discipline of historiography, understood as the scientific exploration of the past, has developed much earlier in time than that of futurology, i.e. the methodologically rigorous examination of the future. Yet anticipating the future has arguably always had more practical importance than knowing and understanding the past. Hence anticipation is a crucial aspect of deliberation—the rational reflection on and organization of our action—and indeed ethics. Even in Kantian ethics, with its seemingly utter disregard for the real-world consequences of our actions, anticipating hypothetical future scenarios appears to be an important element of the rational exercise of figuring out whether maxims are universalizable. Even so, the gap between the huge aggregate of rigorous studies of the past and the cautious beginnings of critical analyses and thorough assessments of future scenarios is striking. No surprise then that we know a lot about the past and only very little about the future. …