Organising Collective Responsibility: On Precaution, Codes of Conduct and Understanding Public Debate

Abstract

This paper makes a case for organizing collective responsibility through instruments beyond the regulatory system, such as codes of conduct and various deliberative assessment mechanisms within and outside the policy context. The paper reviews the requirements for implementing an ethics of co-responsibility, with a view to the challenges current and prospective developments in nanoscience and nanotechnologies impose on the regulatory systems of modern societies.

Keywords: deliberation, precaution, public debate, code of conduct, nanotechnology, uncertainty, risk, science, technology and society, science and technology studies