Philosophic Ethics of Science?

Question

How do you view this subject? Do you think that because we can do it, we should, and thus every line of scientific research, experiments, and inquiries should be carried out? If so, why? Do you think that there should be some limits, some things that should not be meddled? If so, what and why?

Answer 1

What's interesting about this issue is how it's invariably taken for granted that the critter known as 'science', created about 400 years ago by a bunch of rich white guys mostly in a little country called England, possesses an intrinsic, almost metaphysical, moral momentum known as 'progress'. Science must progress! Everyone believes that -- I mean everyone. This is so much taken for granted that even to point out that it exists is to risk ridicule or condemnation. As you read this, ask yourself: are you getting a little uncomfortable? Are you waiting for me to say something like, ' Science is wicked! Let's go back to the middle ages!'?

If so, hold that thought. Just hold it. We'll get back to it in a minute. (In case you're wondering, btw, I feel that same discomfort as I write. Being a heretic isn't easy!)

Now this notion of scientific progress carries with it a moral issue, and that moral issue is what you're asking about. Do we allow scientific progress to proceed untethered by extrinsic moral concerns, and thereby risk damaging human persons or warping human culture? Or do we create codes of limitations on scientific progress which protect human persons and human culture at the cost of gains in the knowledge scientific progress indubitably provides? Phrased this way, it's obvious that nearly everyone agrees there must be *some* limits on scientific progress, even if that juggernaut must be slowed down a bit or diverted ever so slightly from its cosmically ordained course of deifying the human mind to do so... or more prosaically, even if it means this that or the other cancer treatment may be delayed a few months or a few years. I mean, we can't go around creating baby farms and using the products as purely experimental subjects like rats, right? A few Nazis and a number of eugenics advocates may disagree, but sensible folk know they're just wrong. The real area of disagreement is how to determine what those limits are.

But I say: there's a problem here. It's not a problem with any particular scientific question, but with the whole notion of scientific progress as it's currently understood. (Notice the discomfort creeping back...) What *is* science anyway? As implied in the first sentence above, it's a product of human culture -- a specific human culture in a particular time and place. That means it always involves human *acts*. And something that is a human act is something that is subject to the whole area of morality.

But what is 'morality'? Partly in consequence of the triumph of 'scientific progress', morality has come to be regarded as whatever set of rules or laws that society sets up in order for someone to guide their behavior. But this is only part of morality. All types of morality invove a vision of what it means to be human, and it's that vision that accounts for the particular moral rules that people come up with. Since different cultures, religions, etc., have different visions of human nature, they have different moral codes.

This is where the problem with 'scientific progress' comes in. The very notion of 'scientific progress' carries within itself a vision of the purpose of human life and culture, and the technical means for manifesting that vision. The almost totally unhampered conquest of so-called 'science' throughout the world has meant that every *other* vision of human life and culture has had to fall by the wayside, or find some way of adapting itself to the triumph of scientific progress.

And this is the important bit: No one is allowed to question the inherent moral imperative of scientific progress itself, not if they wish to be taken seriously in our culture. (And it is no coincidence that 'science' is allied so closely to the political and economic power of the West, and especially of the USA, over the rest of the world. Science is a substantial part of the justification of that dominance.)

If our culture were healthy and sane, science would not merely be subject to moral rules imposed by legislatures, 'ethics committees' and the like -- moral rules that must appear arbitrary from the perspective of science itself. Instead, science and ethics would be understood as intimately bound together, and the ethics of the Western world's 'scientific progress' would be subject to critique and reform. Science would ask itself hard questions about the meaning of 'progress' -- and the underlying philosophical assumptions of Western science would be identified (e.g., its materialism, its determinism, its utilitarianism, etc.), critiqued and abandoned or modified where necessary.

But this will not happen. Science is too powerful -- and power tends to corrupt. And science is indeed profoundly corrupt.

Answer 2

Start considering WHY we, as people, want ethics. Examine instances in which humans acted unethically and the influence. Think approximately your possess moral code of values and WHY you preserve those values. Could you record them and protect them? What if you did not have any ethics? How might that difference your existence? The lives of the ones round you? The satisfactory strategy to begin finding out anything is to use it on fact.

Answer 3

I think that this is true in both science and art.

But you have to be careful in both. Even if an "ethical" society avoids development in an unethical science or art, there will be an unethical one (or one of opposite ethics) that does so. This will put the ethical society at a dissadvantage in terms of countermeasure (in case of science) or community standards (in the case of art).

So while there are some forms of art or science that ought not be generally exposed to an ethical society, there are few forms of either that should be entirely ignored. Sort of like telling your expanded family that you have a serial killer in the family.

Not something to celebrate, but not something you want to be surprised with either.

Answer 4

I see it like this; either:

A) You are religious and have moral qualms. In this case, you should rationalize that God gave us the ingenuity to carry out such science and therefore we should go ahead doing research that could bring about a better existence. Check yes.

B) You are non-religious and therefore you just want to help yourself and loved ones, and maybe you want to help stop the needless suffering of millions around the globe. Cehck yes.

C) You're referring to experiments on animals, which you are not in favor of on logical or moral grounds. Check no.

Answer 5

Pretty soon we'll have the technology to be able to experiment without live subjects.

Answer 6

all things should be held to societies morals