The Constitutional Effect of the Ethics of Emerging Technologies

This paper discusses the ethics of emerging technologies by locating the political effects of its problematization. Building on Michel Foucault's analysis of the problematization of moral behaviors as a problem about the self, it identifies a problem about the stability of the democratic collective within contemporary problematizations of the ethics of science and technology. Defining the problem of ethics is also exploring the modalities of public expertise, the modes of democratic deliberation and the definitions of material entities. Accordingly, ethics is situated particular constitutional arrangements, which constrain the ways in which ethical issues related to emerging technologies are identified. The American and European examples of nanotechnology programs illustrate the constitutional effects of the ethics of emerging technologies, and the controversies they foster.