The Import of Uncertainty

Sandra D. Mitchell, Department of History and Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh

Introduction

Two domains of uncertainty should inform our strategies for making social policy on new genetic technologies. The first is biological complexity, which includes both unknown consequences of known variables and unknown unknowns. The second is value pluralism, which includes both moral conflict and moral pluralism. This framework is used to investigate policy on genetically modified food and suggests that adaptive management is required to track changes in biological knowledge of these interventions and that less simplistic, polemic representations of scientific knowledge are required to permit democratic decision making.