A design bioethics laboratory

To address radical value disagreements (RVDs), we must first understand them - their structure, make-up, and the societal, emotional and cognitive factors that maintain them. The Design Bioethics Laboratory (DBL) will develop purpose-built, engineered tool prototypes to evaluate RVDs, including their underlying drivers and maintenance factors. 

Many complex moral problems require approaches that take seriously the role of ongoing collective reasoning processes. RVDs have an underlying structure that may predict (and confound) outcomes of collective decision-making, such as elections for example. Understanding this underlying structure reveals targets for public and policy interventions that help to progress these disagreements to good outcomes (whether defined as consensus, pluralistic, meta-level agreements, or otherwise). 

Our approach is based on ‘design bioethics’, developing theory-driven, purpose-built engineered tools for bioethics research and analysis. This was successfully implemented to build novel tools, including a digital phenotyping game. 

Reflecting the Antitheses commitment to include under-represented voices in bioethics, the Design Bioethics Laboratory will focus on RVDs in health and wellbeing that directly engage and impact children and young people. Focusing on the ethical question, 'What do we owe future generations?', our work will progress the co-design and co-production approach prioritising intersectional diversity that we have pioneered in a decade of research.