RRI as the inheritor of deliberative democracy and the precautionary principle

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) can be considered as the potential encounter between participatory technological assessment (PTA) and ethical assessment. Responsibility has the power to establish a link between both domains. Nevertheless, broadening ethics to a more political understanding of responsibility or simply to more inclusive participation raises many problems that require solutions. There is a need to go beyond participation towards deliberation. The Meeting of Minds Project (2005–2006; expert and citizen conferences in 9 European countries with 2 European conventions in Brussels) presented as a deliberation on the future of brain sciences in European Union, one of the most ambitious PTA experiment, might be improved by this distinction. Deliberation is not only a condition for RRI as some analysts suggest when defending care ethics and anticipatory governance but also a promising theory of democracy (TDD). Mainly focused on the question of inclusiveness, fair cooperation and rational decision-making, TDD could take advantage of the precautionary principle (PP), one possible understanding of responsibility, to be focused on the controversies relative to the future. The PP has the potential to structure the meta-deliberation of minds at the intersection of ethics, politics, sciences and technologies.