Goods and Goodies: The Place of Normative Issues in Technology Development

  Charles T. Rubin, Associate Professor
  Duquesne University

That we should try to anticipate the consequences of our actions and aspirations is surely a maxim of prudence. But efforts at foresight become unusually complicated when it comes to nanotechnology and other emerging technologies. High levels of uncertainty remain regarding their technical possibilities, let alone their likely social, political, and economic impacts, reminding us of just how inadequate are our tools for looking into the future. Yet, at the same time, commercial, military, and intellectual forces are such powerful drivers of technological change that any anticipation of what might develop readily transforms into certainty about what will happen. After all, prominent among our "dictionary of accepted ideas" is the adage that "you can't stop progress in science and technology." And there is good reason to be impressed with the ability of human ingenuity to transform our visions of the possible into the actual.

The problem is that when predictions of what might occur morph into presumptions of what will happen, the most crucial question for science and technology policy making is elided or taken for granted. That question is: Why do we want or "need" this or that technological development?

Philosophers as diverse in their outlooks as Aristotle and Alexandre Kojčve understood that human action is undertaken for the sake of some benefit, not just because it is possible. Asking "why?" is often the most direct way of elucidating just what that good is, leading us to inquire further whether it is genuinely good. This is the route to ethical evaluation, particularly if we do not rest content with the first answers to present themselves to us.

In contrast, when foresight cultivates a sense of necessity behind that which is foreseen, it short-circuits questioning into moral or ethical issues. One sees that clearly, for example, in J.B.S. Haldane's influential 1923 essay "Daedalus or Science and the Future." With great charm and wit, Haldane projected what he thought science, particularly biology, had in store over the next 150 years, including artificial food that would overcome scarcity and ectogenesis. But these "conservative" speculations were really just a springboard for his main argument: that morality always has in the past adjusted and always will in the future adjust its expectations to the world created by the innovating scientist, and not vice versa. We may look askance at what the future may bring, but the people who live with it will judge differently. What begins as perversion, he famously wrote, ends as ritual. This same lesson is implicit in the foresight-driven resignation that we had best prepare for what is coming, because it will come in any event.

Such a view is likely to be attractive to many 21st-century Americans, with our vaunted heritage of "pragmatism" and our more recently acquired easy-going moral relativism. Together, these habits of thought create the appearance of a high barrier against assertions that moral concerns might legitimately shape developments in science and technology. Indeed, the barrier seems so monumental that those who cross it frequently come across as hysterical in their level of concern.

What is easy to forget is that, in fact, there is no barrier at all. Rather, the direction of developments in science and technology are already being shaped by normative visions of how we want the world to be, whether they are recognized as such or not. For example, when advocates of nanotechnology and other emerging technologies extol the potential of these technologies to improve human health, or to provide better sources of energy or more efficient use of raw materials, or to enhance communication, they are working from a particular view of what makes a good human life. That view includes the beliefs that healthier is good, wealthier is good, and more interconnected is good.

And, indeed, they may be -- although we would have to specify circumstances more carefully to be sure. For example, I presented undergraduate students in a seminar on technology and the future with an argument drawn from the National Science Foundation report Societal Implications of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology suggesting that phone implants could be in the works. After all "humans have an innate tendency to prefer not to carry devices...." Their first reaction was to rebel -- they did not want to be on call all the time. The "obvious" good things promised by nanotechnology, or indeed any emerging technology, may not be so obvious after all. If the previous century did not teach us about the moral dilemmas created by unexpected consequences of new technologies, about unintended consequences, about complexly interacting consequences, and about the sheer perversity of the aphorism "be careful what you wish for because you might get it," then it quite probably did not teach us anything at all.

So, when it comes to ethical concerns about emerging technologies, the issue is not that some group "with an agenda" wants to stand in the way of scientists, engineers, and developers who just want to get on with their work -- or of human progress as a whole. What is at issue is a normative conflict -- divergent visions of the way the world ought to be, of what progress means -- pure and simple. Even the claim that scientific research should proceed unobstructed by moral scruples is itself a moral scruple about the value of the free exchange of ideas.

Moral conflicts are tough. Can we turn to science to help us resolve them? Only to a very limited extent. Modern natural science, as a method and/or a body of (provisional) knowledge cannot instruct us on how free the scientist ought to be to pursue his or her research agenda as part of what defines it is the fact-value distinction. The "logical gulf" between the is and the ought means that the scientific method (as political scientist Arnold Brecht noted years ago) cannot establish "whether something ought to be achieved or approved." Modern science cannot draw conclusions about what should be from what is. It can study expressions of opinions about values through survey research,or attempt to explore their psychological or social origins. Science can try to extrapolate possible consequences of holding certain values. But, if the fact-value distinction is the last word, it cannot evaluate their merits scientifically. The scientist is free to speculate about the possible consequences of doing or failing to do research in some area, but qua scientist stands on the same normative ground as the critic when it comes to recommending one route over another.

Whether the fact-value distinction is the last word is an imposing question, as is whether any kind of rational treatment of our visions of the good is possible. But, for present purposes, it is enough to recognize that research in science and technology is done not just to be done; rather, it is conducted with some good in mind. Ethical evaluation is, therefore, no intrusion upon it, but instead inherent in its very doing. The question then is not whether ethics will play a role in the new world we are creating, but whether it will do so explicitly and thoughtfully.

Charles T. Rubin is an associate professor of political science at Duquesne University, currently writing a book titled Why Be Human? Defending Progress Against Its Friends. He is also an IBHF Fellow.