caa a22 4500 60623831X CHVBK 20210128101257.0 cr unu---uuuuu 210128e20151101xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s10677-015-9582-8 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s10677-015-9582-8 How to Shape a Better Future? Epistemic Difficulties for Ethical Assessment and Anticipatory Governance of Emerging Technologies [Elektronische Daten] [Brent Mittelstadt, Bernd Stahl, N. Fairweather] Empirical research into the ethics of emerging technologies, often involving foresight studies, technology assessment or application of the precautionary principle, raises significant epistemological challenges by failing to explain the relative epistemic status of contentious normative claims about future states. This weakness means that it is unclear why the conclusions reached by these approaches should be considered valid, for example in anticipatory ethical assessment or governance of emerging technologies. This paper explains and responds to this problem by proposing an account of how the epistemic status of uncertain normative claims can be established in ethical and political discourses based on Jürgen Habermas' discourse ethics. To better understand the nature of the problem, the relationship between norms, facts and the future is explored in light of potential meta-ethical fallacies faced in the field of empirical ethics. Weaknesses of current approaches to anticipatory ethical assessment and governance are then explored, including the Precautionary Principle and Technology Assessment. We argue that the epistemic status of uncertain normative claims can be understood within Habermas' approach to political discourse, which requires ‘translation' of uncertain claims to be comprehensible to other stakeholders in discourse. Translation thus provides a way to allow for uncertain normative claims to be considered alongside other types of validity claims in discourse. The paper contributes a conceptual account of the epistemic status of uncertain normative claims in discourse and begins to develop a ‘methodology of translation' which can be further developed for approaches to research and ethical assessment supporting anticipatory evidence-based policy, governance and system design. Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht, 2015 Emerging technologies nationallicence Empirical ethics nationallicence Evidence-based policy nationallicence Technology assessment nationallicence Epistemology nationallicence Habermas nationallicence Anticipatory governance nationallicence Mittelstadt Brent University of Oxford, Oxford, UK aut Stahl Bernd De Montfort University, Leicester, UK aut Fairweather N. De Montfort University, Leicester, UK aut Ethical Theory and Moral Practice Springer Netherlands 18/5(2015-11-01), 1027-1047 1386-2820 18:5<1027 2015 18 10677 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-015-9582-8 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-015-9582-8 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Mittelstadt Brent University of Oxford, Oxford, UK aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Stahl Bernd De Montfort University, Leicester, UK aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Fairweather N. De Montfort University, Leicester, UK aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Ethical Theory and Moral Practice Springer Netherlands 18/5(2015-11-01), 1027-1047 1386-2820 18:5<1027 2015 18 10677