ITAS - Elektronische Pre-Prints

In this paper, I will have a look at the interference of ethical reflection and the provisional and perhaps futuristic nature of its subject in such recent questions like human enhancement at the interface between society, technology, and ethics. This interface brings up more complex challenges to adequately dealing with normative and epistemic aspects of providing orientation. Taking the program of human enhancement as an example for the sake of illustration I will analyse some aspects of future communication which are relevant in this context. Especially the different functions which are simultaneously related with future communication and the resulting, partly severe, ambivalences of visionary communication give rise to be dealt with in ethical reflection. Concerning methodology I will outline two proposals for cooperation between ethics and future analysis approaches: an "ethical vision assessment" which comprises epistemological as well as normative aspects of gaining orientation, and an "ethically oriented technology foresight".