Hannah Winther

Remote sensing (RS) has become indispensable for monitoring Earth’s processes and informing environmental and political decisions. Yet, despite a long history of critical scholarship pointing to its epistemological limits and political embeddedness, mainstream RS research and public representation continue to treat the technology as offering neutral and comprehensive insights into the planet. In this perspective paper, we revisit these critiques and argue that the celebratory narrative of RS persists and that the field has largely failed to integrate them into research practice, training, and institutional culture. We center our analysis on what we call the “satellite gaze”: a socio-technical perspective shaped by four interrelated dimensions: its positionality (“gaze from where”), its ownership (“whose gaze”), its production (“which gaze”), and its object (“gaze on what”). Drawing on feminist theory and Hannah Arendt’s reflections on space exploration, we show how RS fosters an illusion of objectivity and mastery that risks reinforcing rather than overcoming structural inequalities. Through case studies from our own work and existing literature, we illustrate how technical choices, image interpretation, institutional preferences, and global-scale ambitions shape what becomes visible, what is obscured, and who benefits. We conclude that the promise of RS should not lie in mirroring the Earth “as it is,” but in cultivating plurality by acknowledging its situated knowledge production, engaging with local expertise, and confronting the political dimensions of observation. Without such reflexivity, RS risks contributing to the very alienation and inequalities if often claims to overcome.

In recent years, there has been a rise of empirical approaches to ethics, particularly within medical ethics and bioethics, where emerging fields such as empirical bioethics propose to use qualitative research methods to inform normative analysis. Such methods, it is argued, can give bioethicists a thicker, more contextual basis for settling complex moral issues. So far, however, there has been little discussion of potential uses of such contextual approaches in animal ethics. Whereas we can interview patients and conduct focus groups with stakeholders, we cannot ask animals about their values and opinions. However, there are reasons to believe that empirical research methods can constitute useful tools in this field as well. This chapter uses the case of, genome editing of animals to make this point. On traditional approaches to animal ethics, matters of moral status are settled on the basis of capacities such as having interests or the ability to suffer (Singer) or on what their rights are as ‘subjects-of-a-life’ (Regan). In the case of genome editing, neither of these approaches seems able to capture what is at stake. For example, while genome editing can be used to reduce suffering, there may still be other reasons why its use could be considered morally objectionable. The chapter takes as its departure the work of Cora Diamond, who has argued that we cannot determine how we ought to treat animals based on what characteristics they have and that we should rather consider the role they play in our lives as our ‘fellow creatures’. On her account, what animals are is not given to us independently of our ways of thinking about and responding to them. This opens up a space for exploring practices, values and traditions connected to our relationships with animals. The chapter argues that qualitative research methods can serve as useful tools to gain insight into these contexts, providing a normative basis for determining whether the use of genome editing technologies is compatible with a respectful treatment of animals.

One of the reasons why GMOs have met public resistance in the past is that they are perceived as “unnatural”. The basis for this claim has, in part, to do with crossing species boundaries, which is considered morally objectionable. The emergence of CRISPR is sometimes argued to be an ethical game-changer in this regard since it does not require the insertion of foreign genes. Based on an empirical bioethics study including individual interviews and focus groups with laypeople and other stakeholders, this article analyses the normative role of appeals to naturalness in discussions about the moral acceptability of using CRISPR in salmon farming. It discusses two dimensions of naturalness found in the material– living by species-specific nature and being unaffected by humans– and argues that these dimensions put down criteria for the application of CRISPR that lead to a conflict between our moral duties towards the farmed salmon and those we hold towards the wild salmon as a threatened species. It also points to a paradox which is likely to gain traction with further climate change and biodiversity loss, namely that while nature, understood as that which is unaffected by humans, is presented as an ideal, conserving nature in its pristine state may rely on technology and human intervention.

Up against capacity‐based approaches to animal ethics, Cora Diamond has put the idea of animals as our fellow creatures. The aim of this article is to explore the implications of this concept for our treatment of fish. Fish have traditionally been placed at the borders or even outside of the moral community, although there is growing evidence that they have perceptual and social capacities comparable to animals that are considered morally significant. Given that a fellow creature's approach is not primarily concerned with capacities, fish may pose a challenge: Can fish be seen as our fellow creatures, and if so, on what grounds? In exploring these questions, we defend Diamond against Jeff McMahan's critique of her account and its implications that the fellow creature‐concept is reducible to either capacities or special relationships and leaves no room for argument‐based moral reform. We suggest that moral attention is key to grasping the moral significance of fish and discuss how scientific research can support such attention. In so doing, we demonstrate how Diamond's approach to animal ethics provides a viable alternative to the dominant animal ethics approaches. Finally, we indicate how this approach can be useful for discussions on industrial fish farming.

The genome editing technology CRISPR is described as a technological game-changer because of its flexibility and precision, and as an ethical game-changer due to its ability to engineer traits in living organisms without crossing species, avoiding a significant objection to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). In salmon farming, applications of CRISPR in breeding hold the promise of handling environmental and fish welfare challenges yet require social acceptance. Adopting an empirical bioethics framework, this stakeholder interview study shows that respecting species borders is important, but not decisive, for acceptance among Norwegian stakeholders. The main objections are based on moral reflections about technology use and outcomes. These reflections combine principles and pragmatic deliberations of moral costs and benefits, suggesting that CRISPR applications with environmentally and ethically significant benefits can be socially acceptable. This indicates that the game-changing potential of CRISPR relies on the characteristics of the editing and the context in which the application takes place.

Gene editing technologies such as CRISPR hold the promise to solve many of the challenges in industrial salmon farming. However, for the technology to be taken into use, it has to be deemed socially and morally acceptable. Whereas older gene modification technologies have been met with much public resistance, there are hopes that CRISPR might change the debate, since it does not require inserting genes from other organisms and can therefore be considered less invasive and more natural. Though the concept of naturalness is contested, it is frequently appealed to in science communication and explanations of why the public should be more inclined to accept CRISPR-edited organisms than GMOs. Farmed salmon is a good case for considering our intuitions about naturalness, since it is a recently domesticated species, far removed from its cousin in the wild. The study presented here consists of 19 interviews with stakeholders and 4 focus groups with consumers. A major finding is that the concept of naturalness is not considered crucial when it comes to determining the acceptability of using CRISPR on farmed salmon; what is significant is rather whether its use is consistent with a respectful treatment of them.

The past few decades have seen a turn to the empirical in applied ethics. This article makes two contributions to debates on this turn: one with regard to methodology and the other with regard to scope. First, it considers empirical bioethics, which arose out of a protest against abstract theorizing in moral philosophy and a call for more sensitivity to lived experience. Though by now an established field, methodological discussions are still centred around the question of how empirical research can inform normative analysis. This article proposes an answer to this question that is based on Iris Murdoch’s criticism of the fact/value distinction and Cora Diamond’s concept of reflective empiricism. Second, the discussion takes as a point of departure a study on genome-edited farmed salmon that uses qualitative research interviews and focus groups. Although there are several animal ethics studies based in empirical data, there are few works on the methodological challenges raised by empirical ethics in this area. The article contributes to these discussions by arguing that reflective empiricism can constitute a methodological approach to animal ethics.

Mary Midgley, Iris Murdoch, Gertrude Anscombe and Philippa Foot studied together in Oxford during the war, at a time when most of the men had left the university, leaving it to them for themselves. These unique circumstances where decisive for the fact that they all went on to become successful philosophers and were able to develop their own original philosophical theories, opposing the philosophical dogmas of their time, Midgley later wrote. This claim is the point of departure for this article. It has three purposes: First I try to say something about the circumstances that made it possible to develop such alternatives, and second, I try to say something about what they consist in. Finally, I ask what this story can teach us about inclusion of women in philosophy today.

Cora Diamond has criticized capacity-based approaches to determining the moral status of animals, arguing instead that the morally significant fact is that we have relationships to animals as our fellow creatures. This paper explores implications of her approach to fish and the practice of fish farming. Fish differ from most other animals due to their appearances and under-water existence, and it is not obvious that fish belong to our fellow creatures, and – if so – what it means for our treatment of them. In particular: if fish are fellow creatures, can we treat them in the way done in contemporary salmon farming ? Iris Murdoch points out that moral differences are conceptual differences, that is differences in how we see the world. Similarly, Diamond argues that we should not consider ‘animal’ or ‘human’ as biological classifications – they are conceptual configurations that shape the way we think and make sense of the world. In this article, we explore the implication of the fellow creature concept for the case of fish, which challenge our ordinary understandings of companionship with animals. We argue that farmed salmon should be consibdered as a special kind of fellow creatures living in water, and discuss how scientific research on biological features of fish may influence how we see them. We also sketch how Diamond’s approach implies a need for reform of current salmon farming practices.