Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!pyramid!hplabs!hplabsz!taylor
From: cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Re: Computers, Science, and Civil Society
Message-ID: <1849@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM>
Date: 6 Apr 88 23:02:34 GMT
Sender: taylor@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM
Organization: Purdue University Statistics Department
Lines: 33
Approved: taylor@hplabs

Jeff Coggshall writes, in response to Ralph J. Marshall:

> I see this as the primary area which is in need of change: scientists 
> and technicians must integrate societal and ethical responsibility as 
> part of their work - and then everything else will follow idyllically. 
> Maybe. In any case, that sort of consciousness-raising, and view of 
> the cultural role of the scientist must change.

Unfortunately, you are assuming that scientists will agree on the
ethical consequences of the various alternatives.  This is false.
Furthermore, scientists are likely to take into account more of the
consequences of the action.  Thus we have scientists totally polarized
on nuclear energy, genetic engineering, space activities, SDI, and even
on such things as nuclear war.  To give a somewhat extreme example:
should we provide food to the growing populations is the
drought-stricken parts of Africa?  At first it seems obvious that we
should feed starving people.  However, are we perpetuating and
exascerbating the famine by doing so?

I do not see any situation where one cannot argue that apparently
ethical actions can have such bad consequences that they cannot be
considered, and conversely that apparently unethical actions can have
such consequences that possibly one should consider them ethical.  I
personally have much more difficulty with the latter, but there are
situations in I would find myself forced to go along with them.  The
former occur most of the time.

We also are quite ignorant of important properties of nature.  Thus, an
ethical judgment must take into account _all_ consequences of the action
in all remotely reasonable states of nature.  There are no simple
solutions to the world's problems, and there are no simple comparisons
of value systems.

Herman Rubin