Charles Sturt University’s (CSU) Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE) is the recipient of two prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) grants.

 

The NSF, with an annual budget of about US$5.5 billion, is an independent federal agency created by US Congress in 1950. Its mission is to fund specific research proposals that have been judged the most promising by a rigorous and objective merit-review system.

 

CAPPE Professor John Weckert’s project, Nanotechnology and Human Enhancement, will examine the ethical and related philosophical issues surrounding human enhancement. The project received US$250 000 (approx 331 800 AUD).

 

Dr Weckert describes nanotechnology as “working with material at the atomic and molecular level at a scale of 100 nanometres or less, and often it is spoken about in terms of directly manipulating molecules.”

 

He says applying this technology to human enhancement techniques raises questions of humanity. “When you are working at the atomic or molecular level, the distinction between the biological and non-biological starts to break down.”

 

Professor Seumas Miller, the Director of CAPPE, and Professor John Kleinig, who is Professorial Fellow in Criminal Justice Ethics at CAPPE as well as Director of the Institute for Criminal Justice Ethics and Professor of Philosophy, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, also received an NSF grant.

 

Their project, Security and Privacy: Global Standards for Ethical Identity Management in Contemporary Liberal Democratic States, received US$234 000 (approx 310 600 AUD) and will analyse “the ethical dimensions of identity management technology” such as electronic surveillance and data base profiling in a time of global terrorism.