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Concept
Biotic ethics
Summary
Biotic ethics (also called life-centered ethics) is a branch of ethics that values not only species and biospheres, but life itself. On this basis, biotic ethics defines a human purpose to secure and propagate life. These principles are related to bioethics, and to environmental ethics that seek to conserve existing species. However, biotic ethics value more generally organic gene/protein life itself, the structures and processes shared by all the biota. These processes result in self-propagation, an effective purpose that humans share with all life. Belonging to life then implies a human purpose to safeguard and propagate life. This purpose defines basic moral values: Acts that sustain life are good, and acts that destroy life are evil. Panbiotic ethics extends these principles to space, seeking to secure and expand life in the galaxy.
Biotic ethics defines life as "a process whose outcome is the self-reproduction of complex molecular patterns". This organic molecular life has a special place in nature in its complexity and in the laws that allow it to exist, in the biological unity of all life, and in its unique pursuit of self-propagation. Based on these science-based insights, biotic ethics can provide a foundation for rational secular ethics, while also consistent with religious doctrines that value life.
Biotic ethics, and their extension to space as panbiotic ethics, are related to applied philosophy and applied ethics, and address ethical issues raised by biotechnology and its future applications in space.
These issues raise basic ethical questions. How far can we change, and still preserve, life and humanness? May we modify the DNA and proteins that are central to biology? May we create hardy man/machine cyborgs, or will these threaten to replace organic life? How much life should we construct in space? In general, biotic ethics may approve these developments if they help to propagate life. This ethical guidance may be in fact vital when advancing technology makes human designs self-fulfilling.
Official source
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