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The Search For Microbial Martian Life And American Buddhist Ethics, Daniel S. Capper

Faculty Publications

Multiple searches hunt for extraterrestrial life, yet the ethics of such searches in terms of fossil and possible extant life on Mars have not been sufficiently delineated. In response, in this essay I propose a tripartite ethic for searches for microbial Martian life that consists of default nonharm toward potential living beings, default nonharm to the habitats of potential living beings, but also responsible, restrained scientific harvesting of some microbes in limited transgression of these default nonharm modes. Although this multifaceted ethic remains secular and hence adaptable to space research settings, it arises from both a qualitative analysis of authoritative …