Ethics of Science in Flux: From Appraisals to Regulations

Current developments in science, in its interrelations with other domains of social life as well as with society at large brought about essential changes in the agenda of ethics of science.

One of the most striking examples of these changes is the establishment of closer ties between different domains of social life. The rapidly growing intensity of these ties makes more difficult to draw distinctions between interacting domains. This means, by the way, that in many practical cases we cannot assert unequivocally in which domain—science, technology, politics... we are acting. So, the question “What is science?” becomes even more complicated. It is especially evident in the interrelations between domains of science and technology, analyzed by Agazzi.

After posing and treating the problem of the moral liability of science, as I described above, Agazzi came to the similar problem, that is, the problem of grounds, conditions and limits of moral liability with respect to technology. We can reformulate both of these problems in Kantian-like words, “How is an ethics of sci­ence possible?” and “How is an ethics of technology possible?” Agazzi draws a dis­tinction between science and technology in this way: “Science is essentially a search for truth; technology consists essentially in doing something useful” (Agazzi 2004: 55). Then he comes to discussing the difference between science and technology in terms of aims. The distinction, according to Agazzi, “is based on the different spe­cific aims of science and technology: the specific and primary aim of science is the acquisition of knowledge, while that of technology is the realization of certain pro­cesses and/or products”.

Stressing my general consent with this rather clear-cut and consistent approach, I nevertheless would resume here my own line of arguments. I would prefer to speak not so much about aims as about motives or attitudes of actors involved in these activities. There are two interconnected reasons behind such choice. The first is that, to my mind, we can speak about ends of such complex socio-cognitive entities as science and technology only in some indirect, figurative sense. The sec­ond reason: it seems to me that reference to motives rather than to ends allows us to take into account more definitely the fact that these characteristics of science and technology are institutionally prescribed to the actors.

To substantiate the distinction between science and technology, Agazzi turns to such concepts of ancient Greek philosophy, as episteme and techne. “Episteme focuses attention... on the truth of what is known... it concerns pure knowledge”, whereas “with techne, the focus is on efficiency”, it concerns another type of knowledge, “knowledge of doing or making” (Agazzi 2004: 57). So, the distinc­tion takes the form of the contraposition between to know and to do.

In this context the author introduces a thoroughly elaborated and profound dis­tinction between technique and technology. According to Agazzi’s clarification, technique is “essentially the competent application of certain know-how attained through the accumulation and transmission of concrete experience. without necessarily being accompanied or supported by a knowing why such concrete procedures are especially efficacious” (Agazzi 2004: 56). This means that tech­nique does not presuppose any kind of rationalization which can allow more effec­tive performance of any “technical” activity: such type of positive change can take place only by chance analogous to a useful genetic mutation in biological organism.

As a great advancement of the ancient Greek philosophy and science Agazzi estimates the efforts they undertook in order to make this technical activity an object of special reflection aimed at questioning “why” one form of such an activ­ity has turned out to be more effective than another one. So, he makes a difference between two types of knowing: know-why and know-how. The first one is exem­plified by episteme, and the second by techne. Unlike technique, that is mainly empirical in its origin and developments, technology is based on the specific type of knowing, which is directed not toward objects of outer reality, but toward actors and their activities. It is such specific directedness that gave birth to technology, which is the dimension “wherein efficient operation is conscious of the reasons for its efficacy and is based upon them, that is, where operation is nourished by its grounding in theoretical knowledge” (Agazzi 2004: 57). Techne of ancient Greeks, however, was only a prefigure of technology in the more habitual modern sense. The latter appeared much later, under quite different historical circumstances:

It is typical of Western civilization to have established a correlation between science and techniques: first by investigating why certain technical procedures were successful (that is, by looking for an explanation of this success capable of giving the reasons for it, as occurred as early as in ancient Greece) and secondly by purposefully designing instru­ments appropriate for the reaching of certain results as a consequence of the application of previously acquired scientific knowledge... It is this second step which has led to the establishment of technology as something distinct from simple techniques, and which accounts for the strict interdependence of science and technology, which could lead one to believe (mistakenly) that they are one and the same thing” (Agazzi 2009: 12.)

So, now we have a bilateral interrelation between science and technology: on the one side, developments in technologies open new possibilities for scientific pro­gress; on the other side, scientific advances become starting points for technologi­cal innovations.

On my part, I would propose a kind of mechanism which allows understanding why modern science is so effective in the domain of technology. It is generally accepted that one of the most important traits of modern science consists in its footing on experiment. Now, an experiment could be interpreted as a design and then construction of some device, equipment etc., which is created to test some propositions derived from a hypothesis under consideration. So, our experimen­tal facility gives us the opportunity to perform some transformation—be it physi­cal, chemical, etc.,—the result of which will coincide with a prediction made on the basis of our hypothesis. It is crucially important that this result of transforma­tion will be reproducible once all parameters of the transformation are constant. In other words, our experimental facility allows us to control the processes of its functioning and hence to reproduce the transformation which draws our attention. Suppose then that the transformation reproducibly performed by our facility turns out—after its adaptive resetting—to be useable from some practical instead of the­oretical point of view. This means that our experimental facility now can be under­stood as a prefiguration of a technological facility which is capable to reproduce some practically (and commercially!) meaningful and useful effect. So, as we can see, research, carried out in experimental science and aimed at getting empirically grounded knowledge, i.e. a theoretical know-why—in slightly changed context can take up the role of technological know-how.

Relaying on his thoroughly elaborated understanding of science, technol­ogy and interconnections between them, Agazzi turned to the issues of ethical appraisal. It is essential, however, that the demand for regulation of science and technology converts problem of reasonable possibility of ethical appraisal with relation to science and technology into a more acute problem, namely, the problem of searching for points in which these ethical appraisals can be applied in the most effective way.

“... the first step in the evaluation of the moral quality of a human action,— writes Agazzi—is the consideration of the end of this action” (Agazzi 2009: 5). Then he draws a distinction between subjective ends (based on actor’s intentions) and objective (or intrinsic) ends of an action or activity. To my regret, I was not able to find out an explanation of the concept of the objective end as an intrinsic one; I guess Agazzi had in mind something close to institutionally determined, as I mentioned earlier. In any case, judgement on moral acceptability of an action, according to Agazzi, must be based on appraisal of this objective end. From this point of view, taking into account that “the specific aim of pure science to be the search for truth, it is clearly immune from moral objections in itself” (Agazzi 1988: 52).

With regard to the ends of pure science the only meaningful area of ethi­cal assessment consists of problems which in present-day science are related to research integrity. Therefore, with respect to the ends of activity, ethical appraisal can have essential meaning mainly in those cases when we are going to discuss phenomena of applied science or technology.

Turning to means, Agazzi stresses that under this respect pure science can be morally objectionable. He writes:

In fact, at least in the case of the experimental sciences, truth cannot be discovered simply by thinking, or by watching, but requires the performance of operations, and this implies the manipulation of the object which is submitted to investigation. Since manipulation is action and not knowledge, even when the acquisition of knowledge is its explicit aim, it may well happen that a particular manipulating action not be morally admissible in itself’ (Agazzi 2009: 5).

The conditions of the action are the next point of discussion. “They are similar to the means, but differ from them mainly in that the means are tools for directly reaching the end as a terminus of a certain action, while the conditions are some­thing which makes the action itself possible, and thereby serve the end only indirectly” (Agazzi 2009: 9). And, according to Agazzi, “an action seeking the realization of a morally legitimate goal through the adoption of morally acceptable means still remains open to moral questioning until its conditions have been ana­lysed’ (Agazzi 2009: 9).

The last point of Agazzi’s analytical scheme is the possible consequences of such activities as scientific research. He stresses that

This is quite often the only point which is taken into consideration in many discussions concerning the ethics of science.... one could not underestimate the relevance of the con­sequences in the moral evaluation of actions, since it is an obvious moral principle that one is responsible for the consequences of one’s actions, and therefore has the duty of try­ing to foresee them to the extent possible (Agazzi 2009: 10).

Agazzi’s article “Why has science also moral dimensions?” started with such a question:

Discourses on ‘science and ethics’ or on the ‘ethics of science’ have become rather fre­quent in the last few decades, so that they do no longer sound a little inappropriate, as they initially seemed to be. Is this simply the consequence of the fact that we have become ‘accustomed’ to such discourses and, therefore, more tolerant in the use of our language, or is there some deeper and serious reason? (Agazzi 2009: 1).

I gladly confirm this observation by Agazzi. Actually, discourses on “science and ethics” now became much more frequent than they were, say, 30 years ago. More than that, now these discourses are not just glance from outside, they turned to become integral part of the whole process of scientific and technological development.

Agazzi notes (Agazzi 2009: 7) that “the real situation of our time is the over­whelming presence of technoscience, that is, of that inextricable mixture of sci­ence and technology, that no longer allows one to overlook the concrete ends in the moral consideration of scientific activity”. To my understanding, technosci­ence presents something more complex than a mixture of science and technol­ogy. Technoscience is a complex which includes also many diverse activities on the part of business, mass media, general public, NGOs, politicians. It generates various fields for clash and reconciliation of different interests through develop­ment of deliberative procedures and practices. More than that, it requests and creates social technologies for such a type of deliberative activities. It is through technoscience that ethical considerations enter the inner side of technological development.

I think that the excellent theoretical job which was and is done by Agazzi in the area of ethics of science and technology, which represents the “know-why” for this field of research, now becomes significant and called-for also at the level of practical “know-how”, say, in present-day discussions on responsible research and innovations.