I. Background

Some people think that science is “value free” or “objective” or “neutral”. These are obscure claims. But we can identify two sets of issues: 1) One set of issues concerns the conduct of science itself. Are there ethical questions regarding the conduct of science. 2) The other set of issues concerns the possibility of science contributing to the resolution of, or understanding of, ethical issues.

 

II. Ethical Issues in the Conduct of Science

Here’s a statement of the idea that science itself is “value free”:

As a scientist, I make no value judgments at all. I simply conduct experiments, examine the results, and draw the conclusions that the evidence supports. I do the best I can in this fallible system to attain knowledge and understanding of the world around me. What people do with that knowledge – whether they use it for good or for ill – is not part of my job as a scientist to determine or to assess. The uses to which scientific knowledge is put is not a scientific matter itself. And this where the moral questions arise. The science itself is morally neutral and value free.

The system is fallible, in two senses. For one thing, I could make a mistake in assessing the evidence. For another, the evidence itself is typically not conclusive and it could be that further evidence would show that the conclusion I properly draw is ultimately mistaken.

There is much to question here.

A) Research methods: in conducting experiments, one is behaving in the world. One’s behavior can affect all those involved in the research. One’s behavior can adversely affect the subjects - e.g., cause the mice lots of pain. And, obviously, it can get much worse. Human subjects can be seriously harmed. An extreme view would say that no subject should ever be harmed. Or, at least, no subject should be harmed without full understanding of the potential for harm. And maybe there are issues about whether the harm outweighs the value of the knowledge to be gained. Whatever your view about the ethics of research, the idea that all conduct in the name of science – even if the work is done in an effort to gain understanding and is done in a way that is best designed to achieve it – is subject to evaluation, and is potentially morally objectionable. So, science is not in this way value free.

 

B) Research topics: scientists must make choices about what to study. Suppose that no issue of the sort mentioned in (A) arises. One possible issue concerns the choice to study topics that have little potential value. You might think: a well-educated, intelligent scientist with resources should maximize, or at least contribute to, the betterment of society. This sort of point raises a host of moral issues about individuals obligations to society. It’s hard to address specific questions about science in the absence of a larger theory. The issue here is something like a question about whether it’s ok for you to spend the weekend relaxing when there are so many people in need around the world. If you think that you have great debts to society, then the same applies to the scientists.

 

C) Is all knowledge “value free”? Setting aside (B) – which is a question about the relative merits of studying different things – you might think that studying certain things is bad in itself. You might think “It would be better if we didn’t know about that.” The idea here is not that the knowledge might be put to bad use. Rather, the idea is that the knowledge itself is a bad thing. Examples? - cloning? racial differences? I don’t find this objection compelling.

 

D) Is it true that scientists can properly ignore the potential uses of their discoveries? This, too, raises a larger ethical issue. Example: developing a method for getting around copyright protection on CDs. Non-scientific analogy: manufacturing a dangerous product, arguing that it’s not your problem if people are dumb enough to use it. General issue: is it wrong to do something when you know (or have very good reason to believe) that, if you do it, other people will freely behave in harmful ways as a result. (And what if the behavior will not be just to the people themselves, but to others as well.)

 

All of these points show that there are (or may be) value judgments made in scientific practice generally.

 

III. Scientific Contributions to the Resolution of Moral Issues

Gould said that there were two separate domains. He suggested that science had nothing to contribute to ethics. But he also said that the two domains “bump up against one another.” This is an issue where vague and metaphorical thinking is particularly counterproductive. What does the “bump up against one another” metaphor mean?

Gould gives as an example of a situation in which we must call on both domains for an answer the following: “Since evolution made us the only earthly creatures with advanced consciousness, what responsibilities are so entailed for relations with other species?” What is this question supposed to illustrate?

Here’s one way to think about things: evolutionary theory (or science more broadly) delivers the facts. In this case, the fact concerns our special status. It’s then the job of moral theory to figure out what to do in light of that. Science itself has nothing to contribute.

Here’s a second way to think about things: the real question is just “What are our responsibilities to other living things?” And now you might think that the facts about our comparative status plays a role: if they are all our equals, then we should treat them one way; but if there are differences, then we can treat them in different ways.

The second way of thinking seems to say that science has a great deal to contribute to our thinking about moral issues. What we should do depends in some significant way upon the facts, and science tells us (as best it can) what the facts are.

You might think that this leads to the idea that moral issues are entirely scientific. To think about this, consider an example about child raising methods. Research will possibly show that various ways of treating children lead to happier, more well-adjusted, more successful people. It’s possible that more research will yield more detailed facts - children with certain traits respond one way, those with other traits respond other ways. So, the fact that we have only probabilities and tendencies is not an essential feature of the example. The scientific facts can yield only conditionals: if you do A, then X (probably) will happen; whereas, if you do B, then Y (probably) will happen. You can carry this further - the additional consequences of X and Y. But you will never get to a conclusion about what you should do, or about what is better. We can put all of this in terms of means and goals. Science can never tell us which goal is the right one to have. So, science alone can’t tell us what it is right to do.

Questions about what to think next are fundamental questions about the nature of morality. Some possibilities, briefly described:

 

A. Science Actually Can Do It All

1) What an agent should do depends upon what that agent’s goals actually are. That is an empirical fact about a person, so in principle science can yield an answer.

2) What an agent should do depends upon some (possibly complex) function of the goals of the members of the agent’s society. Again, this makes it all a scientific matter - figure out the goals, apply the function, run the calculations of what will best achieve the resulting goals, and then you should do that thing. Morality by opinion poll is an instance of this. But the function on individual goals can be more complex than that.

Many would reject this as well. The group could have the wrong goals.

 

B. No Truths About Ethics

There is no truth about what one should do. This is a widespread view. Detailed study of moral theory needed here. General idea: saying “That’s wrong” is like saying “Don’t do that”. There’s nothing true or false, no right or wrong views.

 

C. The Power of Reason

First, return to the example about raising kids. Perhaps it’s true that science cannot establish what the right fundamental goals are. But, in this case at least, there is no serious controversy. So, in the real world, science does seem to be able to resolve the real issues. This does not undermine the idea that there are interesting questions about the fundamental basis for moral judgment.

One view about how this works is that there are moral facts that we can learn, or at least get closer to, by reasoning about things. Mathematics, and other areas of philosophy, provide the model. While it may be somewhat mysterious what this ability to reason about morality amounts to, it’s not so implausible to think that we do have it.

 

On any version of these views, the facts seem to matter to moral judgment.