Do you want to follow your passion for ethics in the life sciences in a PhD study in our Philosophy group? Are you an openminded thinker who likes to collaborate with other researchers in an ambitious research program?
We are looking for a talented PhD candidate in the field of ethics in the life sciences, doing ontological and ethical investigations of cell-factories and their applications.
The advent of biotechnology has allowed reading and understanding genetic information, shared by all living beings, and in the recent years, the advent of synthetic biology has allowed writing this information into living organisms. This opens the door for designing micro-organisms in order to replace conventional means of production. Micro-organisms become cell factories that might become the main vessel for farms of the future, producing not only food but also drugs, energy, and even materials, disrupting means of production as we know them. To what extent should we use micro-organisms to transform (or disrupt) means of production? What are the social-ethical issues of cell factories that engineers should consider when using living organisms in innovation processes?
Looking into the ontology of cell-factories presents three challenges:
- conceptualising the ontology of micro-organisms, as individuals or collectives
- understanding their status as hybrids and the extent of their artificiality
- accounting for the fact that they are in one way or another 'alive', and thus subject to evolutionary forces, which raises the question whether we should grant them autonomous qualities or not.
Understanding their ontologies and conceptually addressing these three challenges is important for responsible innovation processes harvesting benefits from living organisms.
This PhD position is part of the Ethics of Socially Disruptive Technologies Gravitation program, a new ten year long international research program of seven universities in the Netherlands that has started in January 2020. This program has a combined budget of €27 million, and is funded by the Dutch Research Council NWO, in the Gravitation funding scheme for excellent research, and by matching funds from the participating institutions. The duration is from January 2020 to December 2029.
The program has the aim of achieving breakthrough research in the intersection of ethics, philosophy, technology / engineering and social sciences, and to position its consortium at the top of its field internationally. A key objective is to investigate how new technologies challenge moral values and ontological concepts (like "nature", "human being" and "community"), and how these challenges necessitate a revision of these concepts.
The program includes four research lines, "Nature, life and human intervention", "The future of a free and fair society", "The human condition" and "Synthesis: Ethics of Technology, Practical Philosophy, and Modern Technology-Driven Societies" (candidates selected for an interview can request more information on the program and its four research lines).
See for more information for the Ethics of Socially Disruptive Technologies project:
www.esdt.nl.