1. Vermelding onderdeel organisatie
1
Is Biology Engineering by Other
Means?
Intentions and artifacts
David Koepsell, SYBHEL Workshop, Jun 26-28, Bristol, UK
Delft University of Technology

2. The Ontology of Artifacts
• Artifacts are a specific type of token, one that comes
into being through human intention. Every non-
artefactual token is either natural or an accident.
Natural tokens owe their genesis to non-teleological
causes.

3. The Ontology of Artifacts
• Accidents are byproducts of intention, and not the goal
of intentional action. Their existence is dependent
upon intention, but not the responsibility of the creator

4. The Ontology of Artifacts
• Expressions are intended extensions of ideas into the universe. Ideas
are non-corporeal, they are ontologically prior to intentions, and all
expressions express some idea. Pi is an idea, but a circle is an
expression.
• Ideas are distinct from thoughts, which are the instantiation of ideas in
minds. The type/token distinction is embodied in the idea/expression
dichotomy, but the subjects of these do not fully coincide.

5. The Ontology of Artifacts
• Naturally occurring objects are clearly not artifacts.
The question remains as to how to classify man made
objects that are identical morphologically, although not
genetically, to naturally occurring objects. Is a perfect
clone of a wild animal an artifact?
• One solution lies in asking as to what the intention
must be considered….

6. The Ontology of Artifacts
• Thus: a field full of a food crop consists of artefactual
and non artefactual components. While the
arrangement of the rows of plants, and the selection
of seeds used to sow the field were intentional, the
particular arrangement of genes that makes the crop
desirable was not intended, even if the crop itself was
selected for over time

7. The Ontology of Artifacts
• What is missing from the definition "all man made
objects intentionally produced" is a more refined view,
in which artifacts, whose whole form may in fact be
intentional, and which are expressive of a specific
idea, nonetheless contain non-artefactual components.
Artifacts may consist of non-artefactual parts.
Moreover, artefactual activities can result in non-
artefactual outcomes, including products that are
natural

8. The Role of Intention
• The clearest distinction between man-made and
natural phenomena is rooted in intention.
• Biology, like other natural phenomena, is not directed
by intention. At least none of the products or
processes developed over the course of evolution’s
long history has been the result of any intention.

9. The Role of Intention
• One thing that makes biology unique is that it is the
cause of creatures capable of intention. Biological
entities that are created intentionally (as in genetic
engineering) are potentially agents, or at least
uncontainable if they are capable of reproduction.

10. The Role of Intention
• Biology is not nature’s engineering given the manner
in which biological organisms and processes evolve.
Having no intention behind its processes, nature is
immune from standard moral or ethical judgment.
Nature manufactures plagues and predators, and
devises strategies for survival that have no ethical
basis whatsoever.

11. The Role of Intention
• The survival imperative is not a moral imperative. Only
with the evolution of creatures capable of intentional
action, considered in light of future repercussions,
potential rights, responsibilities or duties, have the
imperatives of the good arisen.

12. The Role of Intention
• Anticipating the special harms that could result from
both synthetic biology and nanotechnology, specifically
its potential uncontainability, means that engineers
must build their intentions into their products such
that values are integral. Designing for values means
that the values we regard as essential become a part
of the technology itself.

13. Designing for Values
• Anticipating the special harms that could result from
both synthetic biology and nanotechnology, specifically
its potential uncontainability, means that engineers
must build their intentions into their products such
that values are integral. Designing for values means
that the values we regard as essential become a part
of the technology itself.

14. Designing for Values
• Designing for values requires first identifying the
values necessary to prevent ethical wrongs, or to
promote goods, and designing systems and artifacts to
incorporate, rather than merely accommodate, those
values.
• The generally accepted principles expressed in the
Common Code, or Belmont Principles, can guide the
development of synthetic biology and nanotechnology
as a template for designing for health values.

15. Designing for Values
• Beneficence, non-malificence, dignity (respect for
persons), and justice have long been held to be
necessary ethical principles, rooted in ancient ethical
and moral thought, most directly applicable to human
subjects in clinical settings.

16. Designing for Values
• These principles are all, at root, dependent already
upon intentions. While the Belmont Principles, in
recognizing the need to balance risks and benefits in
pursuing research or treatment, utilize utilitarian
frameworks to some limited degree, the primacy of
intention in weighing responsibilities and liabilities is
clear

17. Designing for Values
• Biology gave us the capacity for intending, and now
places upon engineers in the position of creating
technologies whose full implications cannot be known.
With this comes the ethical responsibility to build into
such technologies some limiting factors, some positive
values, and some measure of humility.

18. Designing for Values
• Engineering differs from biology because it is an intentional
process. The trick is to build into synthetic biological systems
man’s capacities for good intention, and to limit bad intentions –
so that the artifacts devised within and by this technology abide
by the values we already ascribe to in medicine and research.
• We do this with numerous other technologies and their artifacts,
for instance: adding filters to cigarettes, safety locks on guns,
replacing ozone-depleting chemicals with more inert ones,
building into prescription opiates time-release mechanisms meant
to defeat their intentional misuse, etc.

19. Designing for Values
• While many see synthetic biology as the mere
application of the processes of engineering to
biological components, biology and its special
characteristics, including our existence as biological
phenomena, imports special duties. We recognize
these duties in already existing fields of applied ethics.
Research and medical ethics have adopted well-
formed principles to guide clinicians and researchers
when dealing with human subjects. These principles
depend upon directing our intentions toward the good
in medical and research practice.

20. Designing for Values
• Designing synthetic biological artifacts for these values
means recognizing certain moral limitations and
positive duties when creating artifacts and systems
that interact with humans and their environments,
respecting their dignity, promoting human health, and
avoiding harms.