Introduction: Governing technologies under uncertainty conditions 1 Academic literature and public debates alike have increasingly acknowledged the pervasiveness of uncertainty in science, technology and their governance. Uncertainty is no longer viewed as a residual area of ignorance and risk to be gradually reduced by way of increasing expert knowledge and enhancing technological control. On the contrary, uncertainty is viewed as the unavoidable consequence of the interaction of technology with its environment, that is, of technology's ecological nature (Luhmann 1993). As an effect of these limitations of our experimental knowledge, the introduction of new technologies in society becomes a form of "societal experimentation" (e.g. van de Poel 2009; Felt and Wynne 2007), and risks and possible developments can be detected only after technologies have been introduced in and have displayed their impacts on society. Notions like "manufactured risk" (Giddens 1999) or "secondary consequences" (Beck 1992) were introduced to interpret this paradoxical relationship between increased contingency and the unprecedented knowledge about and control of social life and the physical world, characterizing new and emerging technologies. Indeed, the increased manipulative knowledge of nature and society produces uncertainty rather than reducing it (Coeckelbergh 2012).
During this age of globalisation, the law is characterised by an ever diminishing hierarchical framework, with an increasing role played by non-state actors. Such features are also pertinent for the international enforceability of human rights. With respect to human rights, TNCs seem to be given broadening obligations, which approach the borderline between ethics and law.
The paper focuses on Bobbio's argument against the possibility and the usefullness of human rights foundation/justification. This argument is criticized from both an external and the internal point of view. First, the Author questions the identification between finding a conclusive foundation for human rights and justifying human rights, since it causes a complete deny of the role of theory in understanding human rights as well as in giving them a precise content and a legal form. Then the Author argues that (i) justification of rights is implied by their judicial application and evolution; (ii) some important points in Bobbio's thought the meaning attached to crucial notion, such as equality and liberty, the link between rights, peace and democracy need the importance of theory is defended.
the paper aims to support a view of human rights as essentially characterized by a basic content and in this sense focuses on the notion of basic rights. the key features associated with the notion of human rights-moral embedding and universality-should lead to regard human rights as essentially basic rights. the analysis will (i) argue for a notion of 'basicness' that is different from the notion occurring both within the so-called minimalist theories and the one worked out by Henry shue; (ii) address the link between the idea of basic rights and the doctrine of the minimum core/content and (iii) criticize a deviation from the desirable path, which lies in shifting from the notion of minimum core of rights to the notion of core rights.
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