If we conclude that there is some knowledge we should not pursue on ethical grounds, how can we determine the boundaries of acceptable investigation within an area of knowledge?
AOK 1 - Natural Sciences
AOK 2 - History
Nuclear Weapons/ Weapons for mass destruction
Useful Quotes
The Tuskegee syphilis study is an excellent example of an unethical experiment. The Nazi Joseph Mengele performed unimaginably cruel and inhuman experiments on innocent subjects. Modern pharmaceuticals and cosmetics employ testing on animals including simians that involve intentional pain and permanent physical damage. In all of these cases we are considering harm to subjects without their understanding and informed consent in order to make sometimes dubious knowledge gains. That is unethical.
Gerard Kankiewicz
, MA Philosophy & Ethics, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (1980)
TOK websites
Ethics and Ethical Boundaries
Methodology
Methodology
Human trials
How can we determine when a new drug is safe for human testing, and is it ethical at all to test on humans?
Is it ethical to interview holocaust survivors and urge them to remember their past traumas, all for the sake of historical records?
Starters
What kind of knowledge could be produced in an area of knowledge that could be considered unethical? What is unethical about it?
Who decides what is unethical?
Is it the method of acquiring the knowledge or the use of that knowledge?
What type of knowledge has been stopped from being developed on ethical grounds? Why was that? What does that tell us about ethics and knowledge?
Essay Plan
Introduction
AOK 1 Natural Sciences
P1: Knowledge produced in areas that could be unethical/ methodology is unethical/ what has been done to prevent it.
P2: Who decides what is unethical/ disadvantages of stopping knowledge production due to ethics/ other counter claims
AOK 2 History
P1: Knowledge produced in areas that could be unethical/ methodology is unethical/ what has been done to prevent it.
P2: Who decides what is unethical/ disadvantages of stopping knowledge production due to ethics/ other counter claims
Conclusion
“When the forest gives you a fistful of fruits, they are yours; but when it reveals to you a thicket of trees laden with fruit, it is entrusting you to call the whole village.”
― Iain Chitsidzo, Our Connected Village: Timeless Wisdom from the Shona
“Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.”
― Václav Havel
“There has to be a cut-off somewhere between the freedom of expression and a graphically explicit free-for-all.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly,
Without ethics, man has no future. This is to say, mankind without them cannot be itself. Ethics determine choices and actions and suggest difficult priorities.
John Berger
There's no question that as science, knowledge and technology advance, that we will attempt to do more significant things. And there's no question that we will always have to temper those things with ethics.
Ben Carson
My personal conviction is that science is concerned wholly with truth, not with ethics.
Arthur Keith