The ethical challenges facing science have taken on added exigency in the 21st century, posing both external and internal threats to the continued progress and viability of the scientific project. The interminable debate around questions of ethics in science have not yielded practical solutions in response to these challenges, and most approaches today are characterised by solutionism and disregard for the long view. This paper explores pragmatic ways to foster the necessary conditions to responsibly solve novel ethical-practical problems, by centring the self-appropriation of individual participants in the social ecosystem underlying scientific endeavour. With reference to Bernard Lonergan’s conception of the underlying structure of human cognition and his critical realist approach to ethics, as well as the practical wisdom of Paul Ricoeur, this paper outlines an ethical approach in which recognition respect acts as a key operator in responsible decision-making, in the context of a sustainable moral scientific community oriented towards the good of order, to counteract the harmful long-term effects of bias.
Self-Appropriation and Respect within a Sustainable Moral Scientific Community
I like this essay very much. It realises that science without scientists is impossible, thus bringing back the subjective part into science is mandatory. Although that part never really was detached from science (since science without scientists is impossible), I appreciate the essay's approach for trying to bring it back to the conscious level.
Undeniably, almost everything humans do is to a huge extend value-driven. So there are value-systems which in turn shape belief-systems, not only in science, but all over the human population. Since the set of all these belief-systems is such that this set obviously contains many internal contradictions, the latter imply that there must be a whole lot of biases implicit in that set, since not all opposing beliefs can be true at the same time.
Although I would not exclude the possibility that scientists will adopt the needed corrections outlined in this essay, I am more sceptic about the rest of humanity. But one has to start somewhere, and if scientists make the first steps, maybe other people will follow.
Stefan Weckbach Agree. I came across a study demonstrating (rightly or wrongly) that scientists are generally regarded as "more moral" and reliable than other sampled populations. But change has to come from within! The biggest threat I think is that we face a long-term cycle of decline where nobody wins. Alistair MacIntyre points this out in "After Virtue".
I agree too. Check out my essay if you like, there I have predicted that this threat will realise itself (with very high probability, by averaging for example over all the essays and their logically consistent and not so consistent statements).