The Opposite of Human Enhancement: Nanotechnology and the Blind Chicken Problem

By Paul B. Thompson

Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI

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Bio

Paul B. Thompson Paul B. Thompson, Ph.D. is W.K. Kellogg Chair in Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics, Department of Philosophy, Michigan State University. Paul is the author of The Spirit of the Soil: Agriculture and Environmental Ethics, The Ethics of Aid and Trade, Food Biotechnology in Ethical Perspective, and co-editor of The Agrarian Roots of Pragmatism. He has served on many national and international committees on agricultural biotechnology and contributed to the National Research Council report The Environmental Effects of Transgenic Plants. He is Past President of the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society and the Society for Philosophy and Technology, and is Secretary of the International Society for Environmental Ethics. He has continuing interests in environmental and agricultural ethics. Paul's professional interests include:
  • American pragmatist approaches in practical ethics
  • Environmental ethics
  • Risks and ethics of agricultural and food biotechnology
  • Science policy
  • Philosophy of technology
  • Philosophy of economics
He coedited What Can Nanotechnology Learn From Biotechnology?: Social and Ethical Lessons for Nanoscience from the Debate over Agrifood Biotechnology and GMOs and The Nature of Work: An Introduction to Debates on the Labor Process, and authored Is the GMO Controversy Relevant to Computer Ethics?. Paul earned his B.A. at Emory University in 1974, his M.A. at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1979 and his Ph.D. in Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1980.

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Cite this work

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

  • Paul B. Thompson (2008), "The Opposite of Human Enhancement: Nanotechnology and the Blind Chicken Problem," Purdue Bioethics Seminar Series, http://nanohub.org/resources/5598.

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Burton Morgan Building, Room 121, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN

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