Abstract
As science has grown in size and scope, it has also presented a number of ethical and moral challenges. Approaching these challenges from an ethical framework can provide guidance when engaging with them. In this article, I place science within a virtue ethics framework, as discussed by Aristotle. By framing science within virtue ethics, I discuss what virtue ethics entails for the practicing scientist. Virtue ethics holds that each person should work towards her conception of flourishing where the virtues enable her to realize that conception. The virtues must become part of the scientist’s character, undergirding her intentions and motivations, as well as the resulting decisions and actions. The virtue of phronêsis, or practical wisdom, is critical for cultivating virtue, enabling the moral agent to discern the appropriate actions for a particular situation. In exercising phronêsis, the scientist considers the situation from multiple perspectives for an in-depth and nuanced understanding of the situation, discerns the relevant factors, and settles upon an appropriate decision. I examine goods internal to a practice, which are constitutive of science practiced well and discuss the role of phronêsis when grappling with science’s ethical and moral features and how the scientist might exercise it. Although phronêsis is important for producing scientific knowledge, it is equally critical for working through the moral and ethical questions science poses.
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Notes
While utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics may be widely discussed ethical frameworks amongst philosophers, most people are familiar with their general features, even if they are not familiar with them as philosophical constructs, as these frameworks all figure into how people make ethical decisions.
For additional reading about this, see Toulmin (1990).
It is important to note that each ethical system has its blind spots and none can satisfactorily address all the moral issues in a complex situation and each draws attention to different features. Instead, virtue ethics, along with Kantianism and utilitarianism and other frameworks not discussed, should be used alongside each other to supplement their respective shortcomings.
Subsequent references to the Nicomachean Ethics will come from the Irwin translation, using Bekker numbers to point the reader to the passage.
It should be pointed out that this is a simplified discussion of science. Much of scientists’ work is collaborative and interdisciplinary, where no one person decides the form and content of the experiments, their interpretation, and so forth. However, even within group collaborations, individual scientists must exercise phronêsis in creating and interpreting knowledge for their part of the collaboration, as well as figuring out how best to interact with their collaborators.
While I focus more on the internal goods than the external ones, I do not mean to be dismissive of them. Although the external goods are not the reasons the virtuous practitioner does the practice, they are still critical to the sustainment and continuation of the practice. For example, accumulating a certain amount of wealth is necessary because it enables the practitioner to focus on the achieving the practice’s internal goods. Indeed many practices are sustained by the institutions that house them, where a main focus of these institutions is achieving the external goods necessary for the practice’s continued existence. Similarly, the useful technologies developed from scientific knowledge are external goods (as science can produce reliable knowledge about the natural world without yielding any useful technologies), which are highly prized and often contribute to the furthering of science’s internal goods in a particular area, through increasing financial and social support.
To be an excellent practitioner is not only excellence in meeting the practice’s internal goods, e.g. excellence in producing knowledge about the natural world. It is also to uphold the internal goods as worthy ends in and of themselves and not as means for external goods. While the excellent practitioner may in part be motivated by external goods, she is not solely motivated by them.
This example is based on research efforts that manipulate various strains of the flu virus to better understand the pandemic threats posed. Most recently this type of work was advocated by Fouchier and Kawaoka, on behalf of twenty other authors, who propose to manipulate the H7N9 subtype of avian influenza A that may result in change of function, including drug resistance, pathogenicity, transmissibility, adaptability, and immunogenicity (Fouchier and Kawaoka 2013).
Presently, there are little to no definitive guidelines regarding the dissemination of knowledge that could directly lead to the misuse of that knowledge. Such studies involving “dual-use research of concern” are assessed by the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, which, in 2012, recommended the redaction of papers examining the transmissibility of the avian influenza virus H5N1, out of concern for its misuse. The papers were redacted, contingent upon the creation of a mechanism that gave appropriate researchers and officials access to the complete information. Recommendations for additional assessment and oversight of dual-use research in general have been made (Faden and Karron 2012; Gostin 2012; Osterholm and Relman 2012).
Depending upon the institution’s policies, the decision to euthanize the mice ahead of schedule may require involvement of the IACUC or institution’s veterinarian. However, institutions may also have policies that permit the researchers to immediately euthanize animals for humane reasons.
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Thanks to Howard Brody and W. Austin Elam for their thoughtful comments on previous drafts.
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Chen, JY. Virtue and the Scientist: Using Virtue Ethics to Examine Science’s Ethical and Moral Challenges. Sci Eng Ethics 21, 75–94 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-014-9522-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-014-9522-3