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Should Morals Play A Role In Scientific Progression?
In my science class, we've recently been learning/debating about topics such as stem cell research, and I've been thinking it over, and why should scientific matters be decided by morals?
The way I see it so any people have such different ethics when it comes to what is "Right and Wrong", and I understand that we shouldn't do things that are "wrong", but who decides that? If there are so many different thoughts on the matter, why is that how it's decided? Take for exampe stem cell research, I understand where people are coming from when they say it's ending human lives and what not, but why should that matter if it's subjective? I personally don't consider it "murder", and neither do most of the scientists behind it. If you can save all these lives then do it! Thoughts? |
Excluding morals from science would fall under the category of critical thinking. But as any deep thinking wanderer as myself should do, there are things in the vast universe that it's better man never set foot upon.
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But how can you judge what those things are?
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i'm all for doing whatever the fuck science wants, you only live forever right?
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Agreed.
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The thing about stem cell research is it's not like they're going out and deliberately aborting babies purely for research...I mean we have the aborted fetuses why not use them? I think using our resources to the fullest extent IS a very moral thing to do.
As far as increasing the scope, I don't really think science should be guided by strict morals as it's an amoral thing for the most part. I'd be against like...human testing (unless the subject was fully aware of what he was getting into and gave consent) and I'm not a fan of animal testing unless it was for something of a greater importance than a couple lab mouses lives. |
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In science just as in life you need a common establishment of right and wrong, otherwise stuff goes way wrong. Basically, if you ignore morals in relation to science you can end up with crazy nazi science ****. |
There is a lot of morals in science. Science as a whole may seem like a big, cold thinking thing but it's made up by scientists and they are just regular people. My girlfriend is doing experiments on chickens and so she spends a lot of time where they keep research animals. As an example of morals in science - they have a lot of rats there. All the lab rats get handled and cuddled with every day because experiments show that it makes them happier and they live longer because of it. The size of the cages is also determined in a similar way. They even keep "regular" animals the alongside the lab animals just so they have others to socialize with.
Sometimes you have to think utilitarian to do science. Maybe some reindeer will have to die so that we can study them and find out what we can do to help many populations of reindeer from now and generations to come. You pay the price because in the end, it's worth it. It's the same thing with fetuses. I don't think it's immoral to use them, but some scientists probably do. However, what we can gain from this research, not just extended knowledge but practical use which likely goes far beyond just helping people like you and me, makes it worth it. Just think a little utilitaristic and most science becomes perfectly moral .. ;) |
I think it's irresponsible to say that science should not use ethics in their experiments/research. I don't think you can say that science is amoral because it's done by people, and people will always have morals, ethics, and principles that can be violated. I think that ethics in science is something that is always evolving because we have to answer new questions, like "is it ethical to use aborted fetuses to help other people?"
I think that as long as there are human scientists that are part of a culture, science will always, and should always have ethics. There has to be some line drawn (in pencil, because like I said science is always evolving but there has to be discussion as to whether the research being done is ethical before it can be allowed to continue) because what if you have a drug that you know would be dangerous or fatal to a person taking it but the fastest way to figure out how to improve it was to give it to someone who is sick? What ratio of people dying to the drug : people being saved by the drug is acceptable? And I think fireincairo brought up a good point about the nazis, because they thought they were acting amorally by creating horrific experiments on the jews because they didn't see the jews as human beings. |
leave morals out of it
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Science is a rampant curiosity. Those in the field often ask "will it work" and nothing else. Science should be guided, not controlled, but we really ought to ask ourselves if its benefitting us. |
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They created the bomb. How isn't that science?
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I think he was more getting at the fact the actual act of dropping the bombs had more to do with war than curiosity. However to use a less debatable example there was that whole black hole scare with the Large Hadron Collider last year.
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Point B. In response to your example about the drug, people who are sick do give consent to take dangerous drugs if there's a chance that it will cure them. I see no reason why a consenting adult aware of the risks should be denied participating based on what others deem "ethical." Point C. They weren't acting amorally in what they did, they were acting immorally. There is no factual reason to believe Jewish people are inferior so there is no reason to believe experimentation on them as opposed to another group of people would be more or less moral. It's absurd when people get into these slippery slope arguments. Science IS an amoral process, the scientists aren't of course but I fail to see why as long as you're not interfering with someone else's life (without it being permissiable) there should be any sort of restriction. |
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Science as done in the scientific community is mostly done by people figuring stuff out, proving it statistically and then publishing articles for the rest of the scientific community to read and review. I don't think you can blame scientists as a whole for the secret bioweapon project someone is researching in a hidden bunker somewhere. Sometimes, scientific discoveries from the scientific community can be used for the wrong ends, but if a scientist discovers in theory how to make gunpowder, is it his fault if you go make it and blow someone up with it? Anyone who has a strong dislike for the stuff made possible by scientific progress could go live like the amish if they wish. edit : Regarding fetuses, like sleepy jack, I don't see the moral problem with using aborted fetuses. I can see why some people don't like it if we start cloning stemcells if they regard them as somehow "holy", but it's not a perspective I share with them. I expect in the future that people will have their own stemcells stored somewhere that may help them with certain diseases later in life. There's a hell of a lot of other things we can do with it as well .. Growing beef (food) straight out of the petri dish could be an interesting possibility. |
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B. I was saying that the scientists knew that the drug could be fatal, and yes people who are terminally ill do consent to having drugs with a lot of negative side-effects, but it's (IMO) unethical to test a drug on someone that you knew could cause death as an effect of the pill. C. It is not a fact that jews are any less human than anyone else, but it was the viewpoint of the nazis that they were no better than lab rats to be experimented on, so from their perspective they were operating amorally, but from our perspective they were operating immorally which means that innately there are ethics in science. Even the fact that you say "as long as you're not interfering with someone else's life (without it being permissable)" means that science innately has ethics. I'm not debating your ethical stances on science, I'm simply saying that science has ethics. |
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Risking people's lives in scientific experiments is of course something that is avoided. You have to do a lot of testing on a drug before you can even think about giving it to people. People being asked to test drugs that doctors and scientists know can kill them is just a myth.
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Of course it should, what else should guide it?
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Well, most moral theories are based on logic and reason. Or at least logic and reasoning done by philosophers. The role of emotions have been downplayed in comparison, something several feminist moralists have been complaining about for a while now (example Virginia Held).
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In fact, by saying that "logic and reason" should guide science, you yourself have taken a moral stance in regards to what science should be working at and what goals it should try to achieve. In decision we make we apply our morals, as guided by our ethics. Indeed, the very decision to be conducting science in the first place is a moral decision. Ethics if the backbone of every human society and transcends all aspects of it. To think that science should be excluded from this is not only impossible (considering that it would be an aimless search for nothing), but if attempted would lead to a practice that can only be described as outright nihilistic. |
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Any religious text that advocates the execution of homosexuals and the selling of your daughters as sex slaves to protect some strangers should under no circumstances be used as a moral guideline. |
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Those kind of ideas were around long before the bible.
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no.
science is empirical. ethical philosophy is not. objective moral standards do not exist. objectivism assumes that a thing's qualities are inherent in the thing itself. but moral values do not exist out there in the world. this is not to say they are purely subjective; rather, they subsist in the uneasy space between subject and object. they arise from a dialectical relationship between us and our experiences of the world. stem cell research, cloning, and everything else simply are. intrinsically, they are neither good nor bad. so why should our experiental moral values get in the way of the progression of our knowledge and understanding of the world around us? |
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One thing about stemcell research that may be an interesting mention is that it seems to have a lot more opposition in USA than it does in Norway (perhaps this goes for anti-scientific ideas in general?). I'm guessing that the supposed trend generally extends outside norwegian borders as well ..
Less than half the population in Norway consider themselves religious, another bit of trivia that might be worth mentioning. |
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because not everything in life is black and white.
so there was this guy named hitler and he thought that the only way germany was gonna rise back to power was by a cleansing of the race. now scientifically speaking, it might be considered genetic progress to eraddicate those who are diseased, deformed, retarted, diabetic, whathave you... but do you believe that those people should not be allowed to reproduce, or worse, not be allowed to live? Nazi eugenics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia without a standard code of morals, we would have destroyed ourselves over many times. it is easy to point to one place in which there has been controversy and say "this is stupid", only to overlook the many cases in which it made perfectly good sense. |
^^ look around mate. we are destroying ourselves!
'science' as we know it is very, very young relative to the extent of human history. in the short time it's been in our hands, we have made extraordinary progress in destroying the planet. we are quickly consuming all non-renewable resources, driving new species to extinction every day, altering the climate, the ozone layer, and so forth. we're well past the half-way point. the global population is growing exponentially, and our need for resources grows with every passing day. at this rate, we won't make it another 200 years. and we're doing it without a drop of remorse. shouldn't a responsible species' "standard code of morals" tell it not to **** in its own backyard? |
Yes, there's sh*t they're doing right now that's absolutely f*cked up and terrifying.
Stem cell research however is not one of them. |
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