Motivation
- Does science fall in the moral domain?
- What is moral domain in itself? What does it say?
- Does morality change with times, is it a fashion driven thing?
- What is science again? Is it a way of thought, a tool or a body of knowledge just as religious texts or is it a simple method of verification of knowledge or is it a part to get knowledge that is consistent?
- Take the question of wars and guns development? Science is used in it. Lot of science comes out of it, then is science bad?
- How long can scientists claim to be innocent of their science’s outcome and end use? Does the inventor/originator have no role in the ultimate destructive uses even if she/he knows the power of his invention?
- Main question is – is a scientist powerful enough now to be an intellectual in his/her own right? or is she/he still one of those stuck in the vicious ‘survival’ struggles?
Presentation
science and morality 1- The first discussion is the whys and whats of morality. What is this word, why is it relevant and so on. No expert opinions here, just knowing it among ourselves. Our preconditions and biases and naive understandings come out in such discussions, maybe because no one asked us before what we think – outcome each one of us realized we hadn’t thought much – including the instructor!!
- The core point to be driven here was :- morality becomes very important when one becomes powerful. Else dose one think about ants and mosquitoes having morality? Does a predator (shark, tiger) when it eats a young helpless baby of some animal have morality? Should it have morality? Although most humans will think in the same way in response to the above questions, here’s an interesting work indicating something else (this was not shown in the class unfortunately). In case of humans, what technology has done is amplified (hence the multiplication) our innate responses to our own insecurities leading to significant impact on each other, on animals and nature. As an example, imagine 2 people having a fight over some petty thing say 2000 years back – they would use sticks and stones to hurt each other, and hopefully in some time realize that the hurting has been too much, its not worth anymore. However, in today’s world such a fight with the availability of guns and long distance shooting, there is simply no time to realize that hurting was not worth it! Wouldn’t it be interesting here to show a statistic of how many crimes are originating from petty fights? Though not a statistic, but a article about such gun violence in the US.
- But thanks to social sciences, sciences and mathematics, we are now about to see the impact of powerful technologies on the social world. Social studies are rife with works on why we are aggressive, happy or ‘dont mind’ and so on. All this because the human world has become top heavy and too powerful for its own good. Only recently we acknowledge that we have been devastating for the earth from the time the first ‘Out of Africa’ migrations of Homo Sapiens took place (ref: Harari’s book Sapiens, Ch.4)
- So morality’s task could be to prevent one from hurting the other or stepping into boundaries that help maintain order in a society. This is a limited view i know. But in this session, we were interested in the power bit of all this. Moral views and understanding has and will evolve, but the power bit remains common, doesn’t it? And what if one does not realize that one has immense power and is using it on a daily basis?
- In this slide, i venture beyond the sanction of the class. I mention what my little imagination and knowledge can conjure up on the core of moral thoughts. The ones that are self-generated rather than received. This was received with some inhibition and resistance by the students, which is about right whenever someone preaches uninvited.
- We discussed next some examples of mosquitoes and hunting and the roles of entertainment in our society, if some moral discussions could be held on those topics. This could have been better conducted with more graphics and stats, but that was not the point here. Especially for entertainment, this could have been studied more by the instructor as it was something that needs to be elaborated. Entertainment as a medium of moral education/mis-education, as an addiction of our society and hence in moral purview and so on. We discussed a bit about addictions, drugs and so on and the response i perceived was that addictions were bad and the people who were addicted were enjoying themselves at the cost of others and were bad people. Very feeble expression but more or less in that region as to how society judges addiction. I talked a little about Gabor Maté’s counter to this judgement and how addiction could be a psychological escape mechanism rather than one’s conscious choice. Although this is bang in the middle of skewed morality, science and social sciences are helping us correct this. Here’s a nice short video on Gabor Maté’s take – unfortunately didn’t have the foresight/experience/cofidance to discuss this in class.
- Next we come to the important relevant questions of the moral aspects of pursuit of knowledge.
- We talked about the real possibility of 3d printing guns and making nuclear weapons as the information to do so is readily available. The latter is discussed here and talks about how 2 physicist in the 1960s who were unaware of the methods could nonetheless make atom bombs using publicly available knowledge. There’s a small cath here, the fission material is not so readily available 🙂
- Everyone agreed the motivation is important as to why a certain information is desired. But then the next points discuss as to who judges what knowledge is good and what is bad, who’s the gatekeeper? Isn’t this similar to the Brahmanical system of consolidation and hoarding of knowledge from others?
- Finally we discussed with a population with curiosity but withheld of knowledge Vs an enlightened population. The latter could be seen here right now! Any engineer can get herself/himself a design of a gun and make it. And use it, right here in Pune. I could do it myself. But am i? Does it interest me? And this is true for other technologies too, destructive or beneficial.
- So, if pursuit of knowledge is kind of controversial, guided by motivation behind them and so on, then does science also come in its pursuit? By science what we mean was discussed. And since we are talking of morality in terms of power, does science have the power? And then who uses science with what intention determines the moral domains of sciences and so on…
- Thus, the mother question of this session arises – Can a true scientist, who is well intentioned in the pursuit of science and sticks to it, be considered as morally responsible for the science she/he creates? But first it must be established if a scientist is a powerful person by her/his profession? We establish the various powers a modern scientist has which at times can truely be seen as powerful enough. Some students weren’t convinced that a scientist has any powers and just plays the same survival game as everyone else. Anticipating this excuse, the ‘survival as who’ moment in “Judgement at Nuremberg” movie becomes very interesting. Here is a section where the Nazi judge on trial for sending many Jews to their death accepts his wrong doing:
And here is the final judgement by the US judge holding the trial of 4 Nazi judges:
The two must be watched in that sequence, or better the whole movie must be watched to realize how common humans, unaware of power, can be played and converted into something harmful to others.
- Since we kind of established that a scientist could be a powerful person, we can also establish the kind of scientists we have, in fact any geeky technical is also included. Being a geek of some type myself, this slide is a confession of how a technically able and passionate person can fall in as a great tool utilizable for any end. We love to play with technology and sciences and numbers. We love to solve problems and search for new ones – this runs strong in our day-to-day thought and we at times are obsessed with problems! Give us problems and time and tools and money and some dignity and viola – you’v got us as complacent partners in any crime you want. So along with the stick of survival, the carrot of “socially important work” is dangled in front of us and we scientists in hordes are ready to walk along. That is what is referred as an automaton in this slide – a person who is mechanistic and very well ‘driven’ by external circumstances. We know from the previous session on science funding as to how the social powers of the day, be it the government or private funding bodies decide what kind of science happens. We know how significant an impact funding has as it moves masses of scientists in one direction or the other and can easily be constituted as a great and powerful tool. I myself am participating in a defense related project because i need the money for my survival as a industrial scientist. No matter how much sugar coating i do, or my friends and mentors in the industry do, that what we are doing is good for India and eventually its civilian outcomes will benefit society as a whole, i don’t buy it.
- This bring us to the last question – is a scientist an intellectual rather than a simple automaton? If so what would that scene look like? I elaborate only some things i know and appreciate in the scientists i love as a public figure – Einstein for example. Students, especially MJ were not convinced and thought this was too ideal and hard to buy.
- An old saying from Socrates concludes many things of this session. There is no value in rephrasing here, its apt in the original quote.
- Last we discuss some example where such morality of power could be seen happening/discussed.
Critical comments
This probably could be seen as a ‘lecture’ on morality by someone who’s himself on a fidgety platform as to what constitutes a moral being. And there was heavy bias in the instructor’s delivery, which is contradictory to the discussion mode promised for this course. Also, examples were lacking and a vast number of points were thrown about but there was not many attempts to help them being appreciated and allowed to be sinked in.
Questions
- MJ
- Why aren’t there enough studies about how most insects are affected by humans? Even if there are why are they not acknowledged more like the bee crisis?
- Do you think certain moral values get promoted more over others? why does it happen? (Fro example – if you see someone getting followed and they ask you to lie to the stalker , helping them will be more important than being honest).
- What happens if a scientist decides to abuse the power they have? Who takes responsibility?
- Why do you think people associate morality with religion?
- Science has already destroyed so much (in terms of ecology) but isn’t science the only way to make it better or to find an alternative?
- MM
- Who sets the line between moral and immoral?
- Why do we have laws that are derived from the basic source of morality, because morality can differ from person to person. It is like the number 69, it depends on what a person chooses to see.
- What is the exact definition of power?
- According to your definition, can a farmer be an intellectual?
- UB
- Has the changing of science and technology actually brought about any positive change to ecology?
- Is power really the base for everything? Should power be the base for morality or anything else?
- Everyone does something, some activity they enjoy doing for recreation. Is that questionable? How is that questionable or related to morality? (A: This probably refers to the mention of Netflix/entertainment in the morality discussion. Well i would argue that our need for externally derived recreation is universal and innocent, but that need can become an addiction of sorts and then we risk becoming automatons. And when that happens, our morality and thinking are ‘outsourced’ and easily programmable by the powers that feed us our fix of entertainment. Too dark a view point i know – you can call me paranoid!)
- Does difference in opinion and difference in perspective make an action or anything morally right or wrong? Can morality be justified and defined?
- Different people have different reason and motivation for the pursuit of knowledge, but judging and inspecting for every perspective are they not free to do whatsoever they want? Do they not have the right to gain knowledge in spheres they decide to?
- MJ
- What is the basis of morality? How can we prove with certainty that morality emerged from a particular event/time?
- How does one know what is moral and immoral? Where do we draw the line in society and personally?
- What role does science play in defining morality?
- How can one decide the amount of power scientists have? To what extent can he/she exercise that power?
- SV
- Humans have the extra sense that animals and other species don’t have. Is it justified that we take decisions only because of this?
- If we never put in time and effort into research, would science never have been discovered?
- Would the world be a safer and healthier place if science didn’t evolve upto today’s standard?
- With so many conflicting views on everything, what decides what is morally right or wrong?
- Who defines morality? Has its meaning evolved? Does it depend on the situation?