Biofacticity

Biofacticity is a philosophical concept that allows to identify a living object as a so-called biofact, i.e. a semi-natural living entitiy in which has been biotechnically interfered during its life-span, e.g. transgenic plants or cloned organisms. Biofacticity is an epistemological and ontological term that reflects upon the anthropological term of hybridity. The latter deals with the self-definition of subjects rather than objects. In philosophy, sociology and the arts, a biofact stands in close relation to the anthropological concept of the human being a composite of nature and technology. Biofact was introduced to philosophy as a neologism in 2001 by the German philosopher Nicole C. Karafyllis and fuses the words artifact and the prefix "bio". One of Karafyllis' thesis is that a technical change in living objects, i.e. an increase in biofacticity, will shift the anthropological concept of hybridity towards a technological self-definition of the human.

Bibliography

Nicole C. Karafyllis. Biofakte - Versuch über den Menschen zwischen Artefakt und Lebewesen. Paderborn: Mentis 2003 (in German)

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