Ecological bioethics, ecological and technological ethics in the aspect of the formation of the ecological technosphere

Belkina Viktoriya Aleksandrovna ORCID: 0000-0002-3306-6706 Lecturer, Department of Philosophy and Sociology, Southwest State University 305040, Russia, Kursk region, Kursk, ul. 50 Let Oktyabrya, 94, office 509 viktoria2206.1995@mail.ru

Since ancient times, philosophy has been studying the relationship between man and the environment, the importance of which has grown in a general sense due to the emergence of an artificial environment as a result of technological developments. Modern technological developments threaten not only the essence and spirituality of the person himself, but also the stability of the natural environment. All this makes it necessary to find adequate relations between the natural, social and technical environment, because if the disadvantages of technologies exceed their advantages, in terms of their impact on nature and culture, humanity will face a serious global problem. 

In the context of a global technologized society, the anthropocentric view of the relationship between man and nature, considering natural objects only as a means to achieve human goals, originated in Modern times, has acquired a particularly negative connotation. The undoubted fact at present is that our modern technological culture has reached a turning point and that it must change dramatically if a person wants to cope with an increasing number of environmental problems. According to Zh.O. Huseynova, "It is in human activity, in its rationalization and pragmatization, technologization and ignoring of the laws of nature, that the vulnerable place of human civilization is rapidly moving towards the end of its evolutionary cycle, if on the way to technological progress it continues to adhere to the strategy of monologue, not considering nature as an important partner of social activity" ^{[1, p.3]}.

Attempts are actively continuing to find ways to remove existing contradictions, which are relevant, first of all, precisely because of the onset of global existential risks of technical and technological progress. The very terminological apparatus of socio-humanitarian discourse in the description of scientific and technological progress is often supplemented with pro-transhumanistic concepts, such as, for example, "eco-networks" ^[2], etc. And it is here that the importance of the "ecological technosphere" is most successfully emphasized as a promising direction for building harmonious relationships between man and nature ^[3] on the way to an "eco-conscious person" ^[4].

By the ecological technosphere we mean a special convergent environment that unites technical objects, processes and products of their functioning and assumes the creation of the safest and most comfortable living conditions for humans and minimal negative impact on nature. Its formation requires the weakening of the technogenic and anthropological load on the biosphere. The understanding of the essence of the ecological technosphere is ambivalent, on the one hand, it acts both as a means and as a result of a post-industrial, information society, on the other, and as a field for the functioning of convergent technologies and as a separate integral organism, ultimately absorbing and rooting in itself the person existing in different life worlds: natural, technical, virtual, social ^[5].

Knowledge systems of various environmental sciences, such as ecology, philosophy, anthropology, biology, physics, chemistry, etc., are moving towards a more holistic view of nature as a set of socio-ecological interdependencies involved in the reproduction of life, and are searching for the most appropriate ethical model to overcome the global environmental crisis. In this study, we will consider the representations of models of ecological bioethics, ecological and technological ethics in the aspect of the formation of the ecological technosphere as one of the ways to harmonize relationships within the "nature-man-technology" system.

The end of the XX and the beginning of the XXI century is a period of triumph of the biomedical sciences, which is impossible without cooperation between the natural sciences and humanities, as well as taking into account the interests of society in the general field of bioethics ^[6]. Bioethics is a discipline that studies ethical and moral aspects related to medicine, science, technology and technology, as well as their impact on people's lives and well-being ^[7]. This scientific field also deals with moral problems arising in the production and application of biomedical technologies. First of all, this is due to the fact that biomedical technologies have a direct or indirect effect on the human body, which can lead to the appearance of various anomalies in human biological species. That is why, when developing and implementing such technologies, it is necessary to take into account moral, ethical, environmental and social aspects.

To date, an extensive philosophical and legal framework has been formed, on which bioethics relies today, when faced with new problems. Special attention should be paid to the analysis of issues that have appeared before the scientific community and society as a result of the introduction of new technologies in the field of medicine. The consequences of using some of them, for example, nanobiotechnology, can have unpredictable consequences and carry serious risks to human health. The latter raises many questions for humanitarian expertise ^[8].

In the modern world, a person is identified with the concept of a "mechanical device" in which all parts are repairable and can be replaced. In the widest circulation, the replacement of "broken" organs, such as kidneys, heart, liver and many others with biological analogues is used. High information technologies have invaded many branches of biology and biomedicine. In particular, the study of the possibilities of reproductive functions has made it possible to achieve unimaginable success in this area. Scientists have managed to clone animals, and now come close to the issue of human cloning. The problems of cloning concern, first of all, the possibility of obtaining a "copy" of an adult organism, which is reflected not only in professional literature, but also in the media, feature films. The Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (1997) became an international legal act in this area. It says: "Practices contrary to human dignity, such as the practice of cloning for the purpose of reproducing a human individual, are not allowed."

Bioethics plays a key role in determining ethical standards and rules that must be followed in the process of conducting medical practice. It also contributes to the formation of public opinion and awareness of the importance of ethical principles in the field of biomedical research. This helps to ensure respect for the life and health of people, as well as to minimize the risks associated with conducting medical research ^[9-10]. According to P. D. Tishchenko, "the meaning of bioethics as a special kind of intellectual activity and social practice is an attempt to discover the possibilities of dialogue and solidarity of citizens in the protection of good and opposition to evil in situations generated by modern medicine" ^[11].

American scientist, developer of the modern concept of bioethics, V. R. Potter in his fundamental work "Global bioethics. Building on the Leopold Legacy" considers global bioethics as uniting the medical and environmental spheres of human activity ^[12]. The sphere of ethics, according to the scientist, should be expanded beyond the ethics of individuals. S.V. Pustovit, exploring the global bioethics of V. R. Potter, writes that "V. R. Potter develops the concept of global bioethics as an all–encompassing and comprehensive ethics, the goal of which is the acceptable survival of humanity. Acceptable survival is not only biological survival, but also social stability, sustainable development of society (sustainable society), preservation and development of a healthy ecosystem (healthy ecosystem). Potter's global bioethics is based on the concept of individual health and the ecocentric ethics of O. Leopold's earth. Potter introduces the term global bioethics in order to emphasize its total, all-encompassing nature. He urges scientists to pay attention to the global challenges facing ethics, which humanity needs; to the fact that bioethics should not be limited exclusively to the sphere of human relations and healthcare, it should be extended to the entire biosphere as a whole in order to regulate and control human intervention in various manifestations of life" ^{[13, pp.79-80]}.

Thus, we can say that Potter formulated the concept of global bioethics, in which he highlighted the differences between medical and environmental bioethics. According to the scientist, the latter form of bioethics is related to the survival of mankind, it focuses on responsibility to future generations and considers a long-term perspective related to the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystems. He explores the ecological aspects of bioethics, in which the risk of extinction of mankind would be his main concern, since the preservation of the biosphere and a favorable environment are necessary to ensure human survival, and future disasters can be avoided only if ethical views are changed, because water scarcity, toxic waste, acid rain and global warming seriously affect well-being T. A. Veselova and co–authors also consider ecological bioethics as part of global bioethics, believing that "The value side of the scientific activity of biologists and physicians is a problematic field of research bioethics: environmental, medical, biomedical, bioformaceutical, research, and therefore global" ^{[14, p.30]}.

In our opinion, the main goal of ecological bioethics is to conduct a comprehensive analysis of human interaction with the environment from the point of view of the direct dependence of human health on his attitude to nature, because the consequences of our negative actions in relation to the natural ecosystem can be completely unpredictable and cause huge damage not only to it, but also to the well-being of the human community. Awareness of this fact presupposes the recognition of man as a part of nature ^[15]. This idea is most clearly reflected in the concept of anthropocosmism, according to which a person becomes a part of the Universe and considers nature as the highest value.

The ways in which people, on the one hand, affect the environment, and on the other hand, are affected by it, have been studied from various points of view since the last decades. However, it was only in the 1970s that the discussion of ethical relations between humanity and the environment took shape into an academic discipline with the advent of environmental ethics.

A new area of ethical knowledge is environmental ethics, which is closely related to bioethics. Environmental ethics is an interdisciplinary field of knowledge formed at the intersection of social, humanitarian and natural sciences. It should also be noted that some researchers include environmental ethics in a complex system of global bioethics ^[16]. According to N. N. Gubanov and co-authors, "environmental ethics is faced with the task of developing a new ecological worldview that excludes the previous consumer attitude to the biosphere and recognizes the need for both the well-being of society and the well-being of nature. From the point of view of ecological ethics, a person is responsible for the coevolutionary development of the integral ecosystem of the planet. This ethics strives for a value reorientation of culture based on the moral attitude of people both to each other and to nature. Environmental ethics is designed to reduce the risks arising from the deterioration of the ecological situation on the planet" ^{[17, p.8]}. In ecological ethics, man, society and nature are considered as autonomous moral subjects, in connection with which the main problem of this interdisciplinary science is built around a system of value-normative attitudes of society that determine the harmonious relationship of man with nature. The reorientation of society to the values defended by environmental ethics is aimed at overcoming the consumer trends of technological civilization.

According to A. S. Nasibulina and K. V. Gunzenova, "Modern environmental ethics raises the question of the need to ensure long-term and sustainable human interaction with nature. The concept of coevolution is based on the commonality of man and nature and tries to correlate the ideas of the common good for man and natural beings with the ideas of the common goals of their interaction and development. The key change in the moral and ethical assessment of nature, corresponding to these ideas, is to learn to see the value of culture in nature. Consequently, humanism of a person should be manifested to the same extent in relation to nature as in interhuman relations, moreover, humanism as a principle of communication between people acquires a complete form only when it simultaneously becomes a form of communication between man and nature" ^{[18, p.20]}.

Thus, we can conclude that in the problematic field of environmental ethics there is a range of issues related to the relationship in the "man — nature" system. There are four trends or models of these relationships: anthropocentrism (absolutization of the role of man), biocentrism (absolutization of the role of nature), ecocentrism (synthesis of the first two approaches) and technocentrism (absolutization of the role of technology). All of them proceed from the fact that there is an ecological crisis, a way out of which humanity has to find, however, the direction of the answer to the question of how to get out of it is different in them.

The first model, anthropocentrism, is the position that at the level of everyday consciousness, as well as in science, the world exists for the benefit of people, that people can change it at their discretion and that scientists are free to explore the world by any means. The founder of the Club of Rome A. Peccei (1968) believed that "the current global crisis is a direct consequence of a person's inability to rise to a level corresponding to his powerful role in the world, to realize his new responsibilities and responsibilities in it" ^{[19, p.73]}. In the aspect of environmental ethics, this approach seeks a solution to the ecological crisis in the ethical restructuring of human society. Proponents of anthropocentrism are convinced that people need to change their behavior towards nature in the sense that the natural resources of the world are available only in limited quantities, therefore it is necessary to reduce their consumption so that future generations can also enjoy various material resources and benefits. The ethical emphasis here is not on the materiality of nature, but on its aesthetic and symbolic significance in satisfying the spiritual needs of man.

In the second half of the twentieth century. anthropocentrism in science and philosophy is replaced by a new worldview, which considers each organism as a unique biological value, as a result of the development of the bios - biocentrism ^{[20, p.89]}. This worldview and axiological position asserts that for man nature has self-sufficiency, has an advantage (dominance) above society and the individual, and environmental problems lie in the needs of all living beings. For biocentrism, living beings are active subjects, not just moral objects. This approach individualizes the vision of living beings, since each living being is unique and inimitable. Many scientists today advocate the development of a fundamentally new moral paradigm that would consider natural objects as "morally significant" in themselves, regardless of their relationship to humans.

The synthesis of anthropocentrism and biocentrism has found expression in the category of ecocentrism, which focuses on the preservation of the biotic community and its interdependent ecological conditions. The current originates in the work of the American ecologist, zoologist and philosopher O. Leopold "The Calendar of the sandy county", which introduces the concept of "ethics of the earth", by which he understands the need for nature protection by the human community. Nature conservation is a state of harmony between man and the earth, which is based on altruism towards all organisms of the biotic community. Altruism towards the ecological community can be caused by the fact that people are connected with their own kind by empathy and empathy. For Leopold, any ethical system is based on the premise that a person is a member of a community consisting of interdependent parts, and ecology should expand this community holistically, including soil, water, plants and animals. That is why he called his ethics "ethics of the earth" ^[21].

For supporters of ecocentrism, nature is a set of relationships in which each link represents a special value, the stability of the biological community is the most important ethical criterion. Thus, the functioning of individual links of the community is aimed at preserving the well-being of the whole. Therefore, it is necessary for a person to comply with the laws fixed in natural ecosystems and established by ecology, to reorient his behavior in accordance with ethical norms in order to preserve harmony in the ecosphere.

The author of the term "ecosphere" L. Kol in 1958 designated them the totality of all life on Earth, together with its environment and resources. The ecosphere ("home", "habitat", "earth" and "life", "living") is the ecological shell of the Earth; it implies the interaction of living organisms with the environment. In foreign literature, the term "ecosphere" is often used as a synonym for the biosphere, however, we consider this inaccurate, since the biosphere emphasizes zones where life is possible, and the ecosphere implies the interaction of living organisms with the environment (we can say that the ecosphere is the sum of the biosphere and its possible interactions with the environment). In the context of the human environment, the ecosphere is an integral Umwelt ((German) — environment, "the world around").

G. S. Rozinberg writes that "ecosphere is a combination of jointly functioning subsystems: biosphere, technosphere and sociosphere, with new emergent properties: ecosphere = modern biosphere + sociosphere + technosphere. Currently, the ecosphere (or the "nature-man-technology" system) appears as an arena of human-nature interactions, on which all modern environmental problems and collisions are concentrated" ^[22]. However, we believe that today, due to the widespread increase in the ecological crisis, when considering the relations within the "nature-man-technology" system, the technosphere should be considered as part of the ecosphere, separated from it, and endangering the existence of the biosphere and the sociosphere. In this connection, the importance of the ecological technosphere is actualized, which is "focused on nature restoration, nature conservation, nature improvement ... the transition from the anthropocentric paradigm of modern social development to the biospherocentric (ecosophical, coevolutionary); the ecological technosphere becomes, as it were, a reference point in achieving spiritual perfection and harmonization of socio-natural relations" ^[23]. The ecological technosphere is understood by us as a possible future form of being of the technosphere, an integral characteristic of which is its balanced and harmonious relations with the biosphere and the sociosphere. In the realities of the development of modern society, the phenomenon and problems of the technosphere are studied from the point of view of various scientific disciplines, but in this study we are particularly interested in considering it from the point of view of the philosophical concept and the worldview of technocentrism.

The latest model, technocentrism, is a philosophical and cultural position that gives technical development and science a central role in the life of society. This idea states that technologies are the main factor of progress and improvement of the quality of life, and also that they do not pose a significant threat to the environment or society. Adherents of this direction believe that a person can manage nature and its resources with the help of technology and technology, and technological innovations should be a priority for the state.

Technocentrism emerged in the era of industrialization, when science and technology began to be regarded as the main engines of progress. This point of view has become even more widespread in the modern era, due to the ubiquity of the latest information and digital technologies. However, many scientists point to the negative consequences of technocentrism, primarily environmental problems, loss of traditional and moral values, uneven distribution of goods and resources, etc.

Indeed, today the stability of life on planet Earth is under threat, due to the fact that in the information society, the main driving force of social and environmental changes are technology and technology, which are both a source of power and a source of stratification ^[24]. The broad definition of technology is based on the recognition of all objects that are not natural, technical. However, today, in the context of human action, technology is not just a tool or a means, modern technology has become isolated and gained independence from human action, which obliges us to reconsider ethics in the technological era. Technical devices, having become part of the environment, actively interact with a person, and due to the fact that the relationship between technology and man no longer depends on the person himself, there is a need for an ethical rethinking of the role of technology ^[25].

The section of ethics devoted to ethical issues specific to the era of technology transition in society, when personal computers and subsequent devices provide fast and easy transmission of information, is technoethics or technological ethics ^[26]. Technological ethics can also be defined as a kind of applied ethics, a discipline that studies the moral issues of interaction between technology and people, technology and society, as well as the conceptualization of norms and principles of ethical partnership that technosystems must comply with ^[27]. This field of research is formed due to the synthesis of ethics, technical knowledge, philosophy, psychology and sociology. The importance of technological ethics was first emphasized by the philosopher and physicist Mario Bunge, who in 1977 stated that engineers need to develop an "ethics of responsibility" that will be applied when making scientific and technical decisions ^[28].

Modern technological ethics, unlike the ethics of M. Heidegger, who points out the danger that technology can cut us off from our connection with nature ^[29], does not consider technology as hostile to man. Humanity has learned to live with technology, on which its health and even life often depends. However, the recognition of the close connection between man and technology generates numerous ethical problems that open the door to transhumanistic and posthumanistic concepts. We can say that we are approaching a situation where the moral law of I. Kant can be applied not only to human biological beings.

The specifics of technological ethics can also be considered in the context of the idea of generalized corporeality, dating back to the German philosopher E. Husserl. At the round table "Dynamics of the sociotechnical landscape of modern civilization: convergence of socio-humanitarian, natural-scientific and technical methodologies in the optics of the complexity approach" V. G. Budanov presented very interesting ideas: "According to Husserl, in addition to soma, energy, a person also has a body of meanings, a body of culture. Functional isomorphisms, so-called bodies of generalized physicality, functional bodies such as soma, vitality, reactivity, reflexivity, emotionality, algorithmicity, the ability to logical conclusions are found. Then there is the creative-intuitive body, the empathy body and, finally, the volitional body. For modern IT technologies, the last three bodies are unattainable. The problems of personal, subject-subject relationships are poorly solved within the framework of IT technologies. So, the idea of an anthropological key arises, that is, the idea of a criterion assessment - how certain human practices in a particular taxon change the anthropological profile of a person (destruction or development). Working in digital spaces that reflect our everyday practices in one way or another will either maintain an anthropological profile, or suppress it roughly as it would happen in the real world. The most important ethical task today is to examine each technology through the prism of different practices on the general socio–technological landscape, identifying its anthropological consequences. Thus, ethical issues are built around the recognition that under the influence of new technologies, including digital, a person and his essence will change. The main question at the same time is what we would definitely like to preserve, and what are we ready to change and to what extent? It must be recognized that the system of recruiting new cognitive maps and eliminating old ones is developing at a fantastic pace, due to the fact that modern man is immersed in dense information flows" ^{[30, p.73]}.

We can conclude that technological ethics is a set of ethical principles related to the development, use and impact of technology and technology on nature and society. She studies issues related to the responsibility for the creation of technologies, the risks of their implementation and application, as well as the protection of human rights and the environment. Technological ethics is important because it can help human society to avoid numerous ethical problems related to both environmental conservation issues and the autonomy and uniqueness of human life.

Summing up our reasoning, we can note that there is an increasing need for the formation of a network, synergetic-coevolutionary concept, methodology, methods and techniques for the harmonization of socio-natural relations. Only taking into account the recursivity of natural, natural and artificial, anthropo-technogenic processes, their unstable demarcation and mutual cumulativeness, and the development on this basis of scientific approaches of tools for their study and transformation will allow us to realize the tasks of forming a new rationality – the rationality of a new "ecological consciousness". The concept of the ecological technosphere assumes ensuring the sustainable development of society based not so much on limiting the introduction of technical and technological innovations as on the protectionism of new ecological thinking, including ethical guidelines of ecological bioethics, environmental and technological ethics.