Biofacticity
Philosophical concept / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Biofacticity is a philosophical concept that allows to identify a living object as a so-called biofact, i.e. a semi-natural living entity which has been biotechnically interfered during its life-span such as transgenic plants or cloned organisms. 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.