which in turn rests on inclusion. Under the banner of responsiveness, it is claimed that innovators and other social actors become mutually responsive in an attempt to ensure process flexibility and strengthen the ability to shape research and innovation according to societal values. As René von Schomberg claims it (2013, P. 21), innovators become responsive to “technical societal needs and societal actors become co-responsible for the innovation process”. This inclusive innovation process rests on an alleged capacity of actors to mutually understand the purposes and ends of other social actors and to adapt their values or value systems to those of the others. In the end, this should contribute to elaborate a common normative horizon, since the overall process is aimed at ensuring a co-construction of “societal desirable products”. In other words, the inclusion of social actors and the alleged capacity of researchers and innovators to respond to social need and to affect technologies’ pathway of development according to social values are elements of the procedure that lead by themselves to responsibility. Yet, we saw in chapter 2 that this presupposition suffers from being both intentionalist and schematizing, offering an already settled way of relating norms and context. The approach of ethics Another salient trait of this model is that the overall ethical framework is often purely consequentialist, grounded in traditional ELSI approaches and/or focused on the ethical outcomes of given technologies. This would leave, just like in the Standard Model, much of the assessment process in the hand of experts. Indeed, our three examples (EC report, Sutcliffe’s and von Schomberg’s approach) rely on technology assessment and technology foresight to apprehend and rationalize the unpredictable future, implicitly carrying a positivist perspective of risks (that can be objectively determined like in the Standard and Revised Standard Models). Outcomes assessment is an important part of the overall assessment process of technology and the ethical aspects of technology should be identified and listed to eventually be dealt with. Cost/benefit analysis is often highlighted as a useful tool of rationalization. To sum up, the first model of RRI does not offer much more than traditional approaches of technology assessment to evaluate the ethical validity and the
which in turn rests on inclusion. Under the banner of responsiveness, it is claimed that innovators and other social actors become mutually responsive in an attempt to ensure process flexibility and strengthen the ability to shape research and innovation according to societal values. As René von Schomberg claims it (2013, P. 21), “technical innovators become responsive to societal needs and societal actors become co-responsible for the innovation process”. This inclusive innovation process rests on an alleged capacity of actors to mutually understand the purposes and ends of other social actors and to adapt their values or value systems to those of the others. In the end, this should contribute to elaborate a common normative horizon, since the overall process is aimed at ensuring a co-construction of “societal desirable products”. In other words, the inclusion of social actors and the alleged capacity of researchers and innovators to respond to social need and to affect technologies’ pathway of development according to social values are elements of the procedure that lead by themselves to responsibility. Yet, we saw in chapter 2 that this presupposition suffers from being both intentionalist and schematizing, offering an already settled way of relating norms and context. The approach of ethics Another salient trait of this model is that the overall ethical framework is often purely consequentialist, grounded in traditional ELSI approaches and/or focused on the ethical outcomes of given technologies. This would leave, just like in the Standard Model, much of the assessment process in the hand of experts. Indeed, our three examples (EC report, Sutcliffe’s and von Schomberg’s approach) rely on technology assessment and technology foresight to apprehend and rationalize the unpredictable future, implicitly carrying a positivist perspective of risks (that can be objectively determined like in the Standard and Revised Standard Models). Outcomes assessment is an important part of the overall assessment process of technology and the ethical aspects of technology should be identified and listed to eventually be dealt with. Cost/benefit analysis is often highlighted as a useful tool of rationalization. To sum up, the first model of RRI does not offer much more than traditional approaches of technology assessment to evaluate the ethical validity and the