Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (2013) 627–631

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and

Biomedical Sciences
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsc

Organism, machine, artifact: The conceptual and normative challenges

of synthetic biology q
Sune Holm a, Russell Powell b
a
Philosophy Section, Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
b
Department of Philosophy and Center for Philosophy and History of Science, Boston University, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Synthetic biology is an emerging discipline that aims to apply rational engineering principles in the
Available online 28 June 2013 design and creation of organisms that are exquisitely tailored to human ends. The creation of artificial
life raises conceptual, methodological and normative challenges that are ripe for philosophical investiga-
Keywords: tion. This special issue examines the defining concepts and methods of synthetic biology, details the con-
Artifact tours of the organism–artifact distinction, situates the products of synthetic biology vis-à-vis this
Artificial life conceptual typology and against historical human manipulation of the living world, and explores the nor-
Ethics mative implications of these conclusions. In addressing the challenges posed by emerging biotechnolo-
Organism
gies, new light can be thrown on old problems in the philosophy of biology, such as the nature of the
Synthetic biology
organism, the structure of biological teleology, the utility of engineering metaphors and methods in bio-
Teleology
logical science, and humankind’s relationship to nature.
Ó 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

When citing this paper, please use the full journal title Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences

Synthetic biology is a new discipline that aims to apply rational
engineering principles to the creation of biological organisms, sub-
systems and their components (Endy, 2005). Significant milestones
achieved in the field to date include the de novo synthesis of func-
tional viruses (Cello, Paul, & Wimmer, 2002), the creation of a novel
lineage of bacterium from a wholly synthetic bacterial genome
(Gibson et al., 2010), and the compiling of a registry of standard
biological parts that synthetic biologists can draw upon as the
building blocks for the construction of synthetic organisms de-
signed for a wide range of human purposes (O’Malley, Powell,
Davies, & Calvert, 2008). Techniques that are currently being
developed in the synthetic life sciences will eventually enable
humans to engage in the large-scale design and creation of novel
organisms, and perhaps even radically different forms of life, that
are exquisitely tailored to human ends.
Authors commenting on the philosophical implications of syn-
thetic biology have often remarked on its tendency to blur
boundaries between supposedly discrete ontological categories,
such as between organism and machine, living thing and artifact,
‘the natural’ and ‘the artificial’—ontological outcomes that many
authors find ethically disquieting. Thus far, however, discussions
of these ontological and normative issues have remained rela-
tively underdeveloped in the literature. What precisely does it
mean for an organism to be ‘synthetic’ or ‘artificial’? How do
the processes and products of synthetic biology differ from other
means of modifying, deriving, and understanding the causal
structure of living systems? Is the engineering approach that is
characteristic of synthetic life science unique, or simply a rigorous
application of the technological, artifactual and mechanicistic
thinking that pervades much of modern biology? Does thinking
of organisms (synthetic or otherwise) as ‘living machines’ en-
hance our abilities to understand, control, construct and predict
the behavior of living things, or does it impede progress toward
these goals? In what ways does our increasing technological
stance toward the natural living world, as reflected in the
achievements of synthetic biology, have the potential to trans-
form humankind’s relationship to nature, and does this transfor-
mation raise ethical concerns?

q
The idea for this special issue emerged from a workshop held at the University of Copenhagen in January, 2011 as a part of the UNIK Synthetic Biology project in
collaboration with the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford.
E-mail addresses: suneh@hum.ku.dk (S. Holm), powell@bu.edu (R. Powell)

1369-8486/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2013.05.009
628 S. Holm, R. Powell / Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (2013) 627–631
This special issue works toward answers to these questions by
examining the defining methods and concepts of synthetic biology,
detailing the contours of the organism–machine and organism–
artifact distinctions, situating the products of synthetic biology
vis-à-vis this conceptual typology and against the deep history of
human manipulation of the living world, and exploring the norma-
tive implications of these conclusions. The issue is comprised of
nine original research papers that engage the above philosophical
questions through theoretical analysis and rigorous argumentation
that is informed by the latest work in biological science. By reflect-
ing on the conceptual and methodological challenges posed by
emerging disciplines such as synthetic life science, new light can
be thrown on traditional problems in the philosophy of biology,
such as the nature of the organism, the utility of engineering met-
aphors in biological science and science education, accounts of bio-
logical function and teleology, and the ethical and social
implications of the ongoing revolution in biotechnology.
1. The role of rational engineering principles in the
understanding and design of biological systems
A defining feature of synthetic biology is its attempt to apply
rigorous engineering principles to the design of biological systems.
This involves drawing from an expanding catalog of standardized
biological ‘parts’ (e.g., genetic sequences) with well-understood,
predictable and reasonably isolatable properties that can be ar-
ranged in various combinations in the service of preconceived de-
sign goals. Pablo Schyfter (this issue) documents the importance
of this engineering ideal for the demarcation and evolution of syn-
thetic biology as an emerging field in its own right. Through a ser-
ies of interviews with practicing synthetic biologists and an
analysis of ethnographic data, Schyfter shows how the drive to
make, build and create things—in contrast to the aim of producing
knowledge claims per se—is a defining feature of the synthetic life
sciences, with significant implications for the methods, organiza-
tion, epistemology, and ontology of synthetic biological research
and its demarcation from other closely related fields.
Unlike systems biology, which has largely epistemic ends insofar
as it aims to understand the causal structure of ‘naturally occurring’
biological systems, synthetic biology endeavors to construct, out of
a harvestable biological substrate, novel entities with desired func-
tional properties. And unlike the manipulation of naturally occur-
ring systems as effected by (e.g.) genetic engineering, synthetic
biology aims to design organisms wholesale through the applica-
tion of rational engineering principles, promising unprecedented
control over organisms and their properties. This control can be
achieved either from the ‘ground up’ through the rational composi-
tion of basic building blocks (such as BioBricks™), or from the ‘top
down’ by stripping existing organisms to the bare functional neces-
sities—creating a ‘minimal microbe’—and then adding specialized
capacities on top of this basic functional platform.
Although the engineering orientation serves to demarcate the
field of synthetic biology in the eyes of many of its practitioners,
do the actual practices of synthetic life science vindicate the ra-
tional engineering ideal as applied to the design and re-design of
living systems? Several contributors to this issue are skeptical that
rational engineering principles will prove fruitful in the design of
organisms to human specification, given the nonlinear and emer-
gent complexity of living systems and the ubiquity of developmen-
tal constraints (due, e.g., to epistatic and pleiotropic interactions).
The complexity of the genotype–phenotype map presents serious
epistemic and causal obstacles to modular biological design—and
may help to explain why the actual practice of synthetic biologists
departs significantly from this engineering ideal (see O’Malley,
2009).
In illustrating this point, Tim Lewens (this issue) draws upon
an example from the field of evolutionary electronics to show
how irrational (or nonrational) evolutionary processes can be har-
nessed to produce better design than would be possible through
the use of rational engineering methods alone. Blind mechanisms
of variation and natural selection can be used to explore regions
of design space that are causally invisible or otherwise epistemi-
cally off-limits to forward-looking rational engineers. If nonratio-
nal design processes have proven their mettle in the
development of non-living artifacts like computer circuits, they
are likely to play an even more central role in designing the far
more complicated causal interactions that comprise living systems.
In fact, Lewens offers reasons to think that nonrational evolution-
ary processes will in many cases produce biological design that is
functionally superior to that generated through rational engineer-
ing approaches (for a counterpoint to this view, see Powell and Bu-
chanan (2011)).
Maartin Boudry and Massimo Pigliucci (this issue) also stress
the importance of recognizing the limited value of engineering
concepts, methods and principles in the understanding and design
of biological systems. Whereas Lewens takes a somewhat salutary
view of the rational engineering methods deployed in synthetic
biology in light of our epistemic limitations and the programmatic
demands of the discipline, Boudry and Pigliucci are skeptical of the
use of engineering concepts, metaphors and methodologies in biol-
ogy full stop, including in synthetic biology. They see rational engi-
neering-type approaches to organismic design as a hindrance to
the creative goals of synthetic biology and as an obstacle to biolog-
ical knowledge, communication and education more generally. At
bottom, their worry is that ‘‘the systematic application of engineer-
ing metaphors to a domain that is fundamentally different from
the world of human artifacts may send scientists on a wild goose
chase’’ (p. X).
While Boudry and Pigliucci concede that engineering meta-
phors may be of some heuristic value, they contend that such met-
aphors break down at the molecular level, and emanate from an
excessive penchant for molecular-genetic reductionism, a commit-
ment to unwarrantedly strong forms of adaptationism, and a vastly
over-simplified view of the genotype-phenotype map. Engineering
analyses in evolutionary biology can help us to discern the function
(and hence the ‘ultimate’ explanation) of a given organismic fea-
ture, and perhaps contribute to an understanding of how certain
biomechanical ‘design problems’ were solved. But unlike inten-
tionally designed artifacts, which are constructed with some hu-
man end (and perhaps good) in mind, naturally evolved design
will often solve ecological design problems in ways that fail to
make sense to a rational engineer.
The upshot is that there are significant limitations on the engi-
neering paradigm as a conceptual and methodological framework
for designing organisms and understanding their causal structure
and evolution. There are also strong indications that processes of
blind variation and natural selection can tap into subtle causal
interactions that are invisible to our best models of development.
Our ability to guide these nonrational evolutionary processes
may prove critical to the success of synthetic biology for the fore-
seeable future.
2. Machine thinking and artificial teleology
Rational engineering approaches in biology are closely con-
nected to the machine conception of the organism, which has its
origins in Cartesian natural philosophy. Although biologists are
well aware of the limitations of ‘machine thinking’ and its tensions
with our current understanding of developmental systems, ma-
chine metaphors continue to pervade contemporary biological
 S. Holm, R. Powell / Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (2013) 627–631
literature, biology education texts and the communication of bio-
logical research to the general public. One problem with employing
machine thinking, and ‘artifact-thinking’ more broadly, as commu-
nicative tools in biology education and science journalism is that
they run the risk of conjuring a picture of organisms that can
encourage or reinforce unwarranted inferences of intelligent de-
sign. Such metaphors have indeed been coopted in the service of
creationist arguments (see Boudry and Pigliucci, op. cit.; see also
Nicholson, below). Despite such pitfalls, however, machine think-
ing features prominently in synthetic biology, the products of
which are often referred to as ‘living machines’. Are machine met-
aphors helpful or harmful in our endeavor to understand living
systems and to design them to human specification?
Dan Nicholson (this issue) offers a systematic examination of
the ‘machine conception of the organism’. He argues that while
machines and organisms bear some interesting similarities, they
are fundamentally different kinds of systems. The strongest simi-
larity between mechanical and organismic systems relates to their
‘purposive’ or teleological nature—and yet it is in respect of their
respective teleological structures that some of the most significant
differences between machines and organisms arise, leading to a
failure of analogical reasoning across these two domains. The key
distinction, Nicholson maintains, is that machines are extrinsically
teleological, in the sense that the ends towards which they are di-
rected are determined by an external agent—whereas organisms
are internally (intrinsically) purposeful, in that their sole telos is
self-maintenance. Although both machines and organisms exhibit
organized complexity and structural integrity, organisms are quite
unlike machines in that they are self-organizing, self-producing,
and self-maintaining systems the parts of which are mutually
dependent on one another for their existence, maintenance and re-
newal. The crucial difference between organisms and machines is
not, according to Nicholson, that machines are intentionally cre-
ated while organisms are not (which would entail that artificially
created organisms are machines); rather, the crucial difference lies
in their internal organizational dynamics. Nicholson concludes that
machine thinking may be of heuristic value when the parts of
organisms are considered in isolation from the larger system in
which they are embedded—he claims, however, that engineering
approaches encounter serious theoretical difficulties when applied
to the development and evolution of organisms as a whole.
Boudry and Pigliucci (op. cit., p. X) echo Nicholson’s systems-
based approach to the organism, concluding that ‘‘whatever suc-
cesses [synthetic life] researchers will be able to achieve will be
in spite, and not because of, the inspiration provided by the ma-
chine metaphor.’’ On the other hand, there may be reason to think
that machine thinking will be more applicable to synthetic biology
than to other subdisciplines of biology, insofar as rational engi-
neering methods lead to the creation of biological artifices mani-
festing design features that we normally associate with machines
but not with organisms—such as extreme modularity of parts, min-
imal ‘cross-talk’ between functional components, and so on (see
Lewens, op. cit.). Whether synthetic biology will ultimately achieve
this remains, in our view, an open empirical question.
Machine thinking has also played a central role in artificial
intelligence research, where attempts to reverse engineer nonra-
tionally evolved brains have often leaned on analogies to comput-
ers, circuitry, and other machine/engineering conceptions whose
applicability to organisms is, as we have seen, highly questionable.
So far, humans have been unable to construct machines that exhi-
bit the purposeful, goal-directed behavior that is a defining prop-
erty of living things, let alone the more sophisticated forms of
teleology that attend the belief/desire psychology of cognitively
complex animals.
In a characteristically creative paper, Dan McShea (this issue)
argues that attempts to construct intelligent machines with the
629
capacity to interact in sophisticated ways with the world have lar-
gely failed, in part because of the tendency in artificial intelligence
research to focus on computational, logical and reasoning abilities
to the neglect of conative capacities. As Hume showed some time
ago, no chain of pure logic can conclude in wanting, preferring,
or caring about anything—and, McShea argues, wanting, preferring
and caring are crucial ingredients in the construction of intelligent
machines. Whereas Nicholson (op. cit.) focuses on the differences
between divergent types of purposive entities, McShea aims to
provide a unified account of teleological systems. He defends a
‘hierarchical’ account of the structure of teleological systems,
according to which teleology involves the movement of an entity
within a larger structure (such as a physical space) that contains
and directs, but (crucially) does not physically determine, its
behavior. Properly teleological systems exhibit this hierarchical
property of containment, which McShea calls ‘upper direction’, as
well as the physical freedom to deviate from organismic goals.
Rudimentary teleological behavior, such as that exhibited by sin-
gle-celled organisms, may be guided by simple ‘stimulus fields’ like
chemical or light gradients, whereas more complex teleology in-
volves ‘wanting fields’ the physical structures of which remain cur-
rently unknown. According to McShea, one of the biggest
challenges facing the construction of behaviorally sophisticated
artifices is devising a machine that can not only reason but also de-
sire—generating ‘wanting fields’ which, along with impressive
computational and epistemic abilities, make for the first truly
intelligent machines.
3. The organism-artifact continuum
Much of the ethical discussion surrounding synthetic biology
has focused on ‘dual use’ dilemmas (wherein the epistemic and
technical fruits of synthetic biology could be used for malevolent
purposes) and potential unintended deleterious consequences for
human health and the environment (for a discussion, see Douglas
and Savulescu (2010)). There are fairly straightforward biosecurity
and biohazard risks associated with (e.g.) the dissemination of the
genetic sequence information of dangerous pathogens and the pro-
liferation of ‘benchtop synthesizers’. However, some ethical con-
cerns regarding developments in synthetic biology do not advert
to undesirable or unforeseen consequences that are likely to flow
from the creation of artificial life. They point instead to the intrinsic
disvalue of converting ‘the natural’ into ‘the artificial’—of bringing
the living world into the realm of human control to a degree that is
unprecedented in the history of our technological species. Some
even worry that synthetic biology and other ‘deep technologies’
(Lee, 2003) could result in an ‘ontological catastrophe’ by erasing
the boundary between natural organism and human artifice, bring-
ing about ‘the end of nature’ (McKibben, 1989) and permanently
transforming humanity’s relationship to the natural world.
Beth Preston (this issue) takes up the foundational ontological
issue from which such ethical objections to synthetic biology
spring. First, she argues that the distinction between natural
organisms and artificial organisms is a spectral rather than binary
one. Lewens (op. cit.) likewise suggests that we consider artificial-
ity in the context of a design continuum: At one extreme are nat-
urally evolved organisms whose traits have been causally
unaffected by human activities, while at the other extreme are
wholly rationally engineered biological entities. On this view,
many products of synthetic biology will be located towards the
rationally engineered end of the design spectrum, while agricul-
tural domesticates would likely fall somewhere in between. Tom
Douglas, Russell Powell and Julian Savulescu (this issue) also
wrestle with definitions in considering precisely what facts make
a life form ‘artificial’; they explore this question in connection with
630 S. Holm, R. Powell / Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (2013) 627–631
the Venter lab’s recent creation of a novel functional lineage of bac-
terium from a wholly synthetic genome.
Preston (op. cit.) contends that if it is true that crossing a certain
point on the natural–artificial continuum will result in ‘ontologi-
cally problematic’ entities, then this point was crossed millennia
ago—in particular, sometime around the Neolithic transition from
hunter-gathering to farming subsistence methods, where pro-
grams of selective breeding led to the creation of the first biological
artifacts. She concludes that
Synthetic biology thus does not bring anything new into exis-
tence from an ontological point of view. It advertises biological
machines, but machines are just a subspecies of artifacts, and
biological artifacts came in with the Neolithic. The biological
machines of synthetic biology, like the products of genetic engi-
neering, may well pose special non-ontological risks . . . But it is
hard to see how the ontology of our world is any different on
account of synthetic biology and its sister disciplines. We
crossed a qualitative ontological divide when we started mak-
ing biological artifacts upwards of 10,000 years ago—we have
just been getting better at it (p. X).
Preston argues that the developing field of synthetic biology, even if
wildly successful, does not constitute a qualitative ontological or
even ‘cognitive’ break from the more ancient and dramatic transfor-
mation in humanity’s relation to the natural living world that was
wrought by the domestication of plants and animals and the intro-
duction of sophisticated material technologies during the Agricul-
tural Revolution. In contrast, Lewens (op. cit., p. X) contends that
synthetic biology really does offer something new, not because
it blurs the organism/artefact boundary—that has always been
blurry—but because of its goal of bringing the organic within
the realm of design, where design is understood to carry all
the connotations of planning, diagrammatic representation of
the device to be constructed, standardisation of parts to be
assembled, and so forth, that feature in the engineering design
process.
Preston, for her part, does not deny that engineering approaches are
qualitatively different from the ‘tinkering’ or ‘craftsmanship’ associ-
ated with other methods of design. She argues, however, that such
engineering methods—including the standardization of parts, col-
laborative decomposition of tasks, and so on— are not cognitively
novel and have been employed in the production of material arti-
facts ever since the Neolithic revolution, including in textile, pottery
and metallurgy work. But even if Preston is right that humans have
been creating biological artifacts and engineering material culture
ever since the Agricultural Revolution, it clear that genuine engi-
neering protocols were never applied to the design of organisms un-
til quite recently.
4. The ethical dimensions of artificial life
Even if the ability to produce biological artifacts is nothing new,
it is still possible that synthetic biology marks a shift in human atti-
tudes toward nature. Preston (op. cit.), however, argues that the
‘ideology of control’ as exemplified by the methods and aims of
synthetic biology and its predecessor technologies (such as genetic
engineering) is at best an intensified expression of our post-Neo-
lithic stance toward nature, which has involved ever increasing
control over the ecology and evolution of the organisms on which
human lifeways depend. Yet if the ideology of control is itself a
morally objectionable stance toward the natural living world, then
presumably the intensification of such a stance would be morally
objectionable as well, even if it is not new. (For opposing normative
views on ‘control’’ versus ‘respect’ orientations toward nature,
compare Sandel (2007) with Buchanan (2011) and Powell (in
press).)
Suppose that synthetic biology does constitute a significant
break from, or intensification of, the technologies and associated
attitudes of control that preceded it. Why should we think that
such a technological and attitudinal shift would be ethically prob-
lematic? A number of authors (e.g., Boldt & Müller, 2008) have ar-
gued that synthetic biology presents us with a qualitatively
different ability to control nature than does the manipulation of
existing living beings, and they fear that such a shift in control of
the living world could lead to a decline in human ‘respect’ for nat-
ure. Just what sort of ‘respect’ is due non-rational, non-sentient
entities is far from clear, as it is the prevailing view in contempo-
rary moral philosophy that the ethics of respect, which is grounded
in Kantian theories of the intrinsic value of practical rationality, has
no clear applicability to nonrational let alone nonsentient beings.
Of course, nonsentient entities may possess other kinds of value
which derive from how these entities affect or are valued by intrin-
sically valuable beings (such as aesthetic value, eco-value, etc.)—
and perhaps these derived, contingent values could be undermined
by pernicious attitudes of control and dominance toward nature
(Powell, in press). But what reason do we have to think that syn-
thetic biology or its predecessor technologies actually embody or
encourage such pernicious attitudes toward nature?
The moral significance of synthetic life is systematically inves-
tigated by Douglas, Powell and Savulescu (op. cit.), who consider
whether the creation of artificial life raises any unique ethical is-
sues, viz., ethical issues that are distinct from those associated with
the long-standing derivation of novel life forms from existing ones
(through, e.g., selective breeding and genetic engineering). The
authors examine three ways in which the creation of artificial life
may be thought morally problematic in the above sense. These in-
clude risk-based and attitudinal versions of the ‘playing God’
objection; the worry that the creation of artificial life will encour-
age a ‘reductionist’ stance toward the living world that will lead to
an unwarranted rejection of the moral significance of life; and the
concern that biological artifacts will have an uncertain moral sta-
tus that flows from their uncertain functional status, which could
lead to beings being treated in ways that are inconsistent with
their actual moral status. The authors conclude that none of these
concerns are unique, or uniquely significant, in the context of syn-
thetic biology.
Douglas, Powell and Savulescu accept that the creation of artifi-
cial life could express morally objectionable attitudes of grandios-
ity toward nature, or could unwarrantedly risk negative
consequences—but it is highly doubtful, they contend, that the cre-
ation of artificial life would raise these concerns to a unique or
even greater degree than long-standing methods of deriving new
life forms from existing life. Lewens (op. cit.) also addresses attitu-
dinal versions of the ‘playing God’ concern and reaches a similar
conclusion as the above authors, though for different reasons. He
suggests that synthetic biologists resort to rational engineering ap-
proaches out of an explicit acknowledgment of human cognitive,
epistemic and causal limitations with respect to organismic design,
not out of a hubristic desire to play God or to master nature. Syn-
thetic biologists are compelled, for example, to simplify the design
process by dividing it into sub-problems to be solved in stepwise
fashion—an approach to the creation of life that sits in stark con-
trast to that of an epistemically unrestricted Laplacean entity
who would see the optimal solution ‘at once’. Lewens states that
[I]f humans are to make efforts to alter what nature has given
us, or to build new organisms, we are likely to wish to do so
in ways that allow conversations between designers, the orga-
nisation of design teams, the swapping and transportation of
 S. Holm, R. Powell / Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (2013) 627–631
effective elements from one design context to another, and so
forth. (. . .) Biological complexity is here acknowledged, the bar-
riers it presents to human intervention are explicitly admitted,
and attempts are made to avoid it (in the first instance, at least)
via the creation of simpler systems (Lewens, this issue, p. X).
Thus, it seems that there is nothing inherent to the practices or
goals of synthetic biology that expresses or otherwise implies mor-
ally objectionable attitudes toward nature.
The moral status of the entities produced by synthetic biology is
also a matter of some debate, insofar as morally cognizable inter-
ests are tied to functions and the functional status of biological
artifacts is unclear. Douglas, Powell and Savulescu (op. cit.) do
not believe that interests which arise from the bare property of tel-
eology are morally significant if they are unaccompanied by psy-
chological properties. Furthermore, they argue that the decisive
moral consideration is not how life is created but what non-gene-
alogical properties it possesses. Thus, they conclude that the ‘arti-
ficial’ aspect of artificial life is not in itself of moral significance,
though it could have certain implications for the non-genealogical
properties that an organism comes to possess, which in turn could
be morally relevant.
In contrast, biocentrists argue that all living beings have inter-
ests of their own, a welfare that agents may be morally required
to take into consideration. In a contribution that falls broadly with-
in this tradition, John Basl and Ronald Sandler (this issue) con-
sider whether the products of synthetic biology have properties
that confer on them interests or goods of their own. The authors
identify teleological organisation as the basis for welfare, defend
an etiological account of teleology grounded in selection history,
and show how this account can ground the claim that synthetic
organisms have a good of their own. However, one counterintuitive
consequence of their argument is that ordinary non-living artifacts,
such as solar panels and cigars, will have interests and hence wel-
fares of their own, insofar as they too are teleologically organised
entities. Recognizing this consequence, Basl and Sandler contend
that having a welfare does not entail that cigars and other artifacts’
interests are morally considerable, since teleological organization
is a necessary but not sufficient condition for moral status.
Basl and Sandler reach their conclusion partly because they be-
lieve that there is no plausible alternative to the etiological account
of organismic interests. However, one such alternative is defended
by Sune Holm (this issue), who argues that the etiological theory
runs into theoretical difficulties because it cannot provide an
account of functions for organisms that are produced through
631
rational design methods. Holm defends an organisational approach
to organismic function (also suggested by Nicholson, op. cit.)
according to which the functions of organismic parts are deter-
mined by their contribution to the self-maintenance of the organ-
ism as a whole—an account of function that applies consistently
across organisms regardless of their design etiology.
It should be clear from the foregoing discussion that synthetic
biology poses ontological and normative challenges that are ripe
for philosophical investigation. It is our hope and belief that the
exemplary papers that comprise this special issue will set the stage
for a philosophically rigorous, conceptually rich, and ethically sen-
sitive discussion of this new and exciting field of biological
research.
Acknowledgements
Sune Holm would like to thank UNIK Synthetic Biology Copen-
hagen and The Danish Research Council for Culture and Communi-
cation for their support. Russell Powell would like to thank the
National Humanities Center and the American Council of Learned
Societies for their support of this research.
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