About Us
Philosophy Law and Ethics for Technologies (PhiLET) is a research group that brings together the research outcomes, activities, and publications of the Chair of Philosophy of Law and Bioethics at the Department of Law at the University of Milano-Bicocca.
The group’s areas of inquiry are extensive and diverse, encompassing a range of subjects from the development of emerging technologies within and outside the medical field, to the climate crisis and its relationship with technological development. These phenomena generate crucial social and ethical issues and pose significant challenges to established legal categories.
The primary objective of our research endeavours is to analyse, problematize, and clarify the numerous philosophical, ethical, and legal questions that arise from technological development in the context of the legal framework shaped by modern constitutionalism and human rights. To this end, our ethical-philosophical and legal inquiries are focused on the following research topics:
- Philosophy of law: our analysis is twofold and involves the clarification of legal language in its relationship to other languages, as well as the investigation of the impacts of emerging technologies on legal language, concepts, and categories.
- Bioethics and Biolaw: our exploration of the ethical and legal issues is dedicated to advances in neuroscience, genetics, and artificial intelligence within the medical field. It also encompasses the discourse surrounding human enhancement, the dissemination of m-Health, and the ethical-legal issues pertaining to environmental sustainability of the healthcare sector.
- Ethics of scientific research: we investigate how autonomy and justice can be efficiently implemented in the research field with reference to vulnerable categories of individuals.
- Ethics of sport: our research focuses on the impact of emerging technologies on sport within the value-laden European approach. Particular attention is being paid to the ethical-legal questions related to enhancing practices.
PhiLET promotes conceptual and theoretical analysis as basis for a practical approach. Our mission includes research, high-quality teaching, elaboration of practical guidelines on specific issues, public outreach, and dissemination to the wider community.