Emergence of ethical questioning within scientific reasoning

Emergence of ethical questioning within scientific reasoning
Dominique Vermersch, Agrocampus Rennes
1. Introduction
The recent increase in ethical, and more particularly bioethical, concerns is a form of
reaction to the sometimes ambiguous relationship between human knowledge and action.
The space of possibles opened up by scientific knowledge in fact tends to limit this action to
technical power over nature1, thus disregarding the necessary ethical tendencies of our
actions and this, in the very name of a requirement for instrumental rationality. This
divergence is with researchers in their daily activities and reflects the ethical considerations
that extend beyond the requirements of their professional code of practice. This being so,
like ethical questioning scientific reasoning stems from a common source — human
reason2; they therefore appeal to the same demand for rationality.
1 cf. Bacon: "Scire est posse", i.e. knowledge is power.
2 "It is appropriate to relate science and ethics to their common source, which is reason, this
power within us that enables us to understand reality and determine the course that our
action should take. There is a unity of reason, but, according to Kant's terminology, there are
two different uses of reason, a "theoretical use", which relates to the order of knowledge,
and a "practical use", which relates to the order of action. In its theoretical use, reason
determines all that is related to genuine knowledge; in its practical use, it determines what
gives action — ability to introduce new determinations to reality — its genuine tendencies".
("Il convient de rapporter science et éthique à leur source commune, qui est la raison, ce
pouvoir en nous qui nous permet de comprendre la réalité et de juger des orientations que
nous donnons à notre action. Il y a une unité de la raison, mais, selon la terminologie de
Kant, il y a deux usages distincts de la raison, un "usage théorique", qui est relatif à l'ordre
du savoir, et un "usage pratique", qui est de l'ordre de l'action. Dans son usage théorique la
raison détermine ce qui va dans le sens du savoir authentique ; dans l'usage pratique, elle
1
By looking at the distinction made by Lambert (1999), there are understood to be three
levels in scientific activity: (a) an ontological level generally apprehended through a
reductionist approach; (b) an epistemological level relating to the status of produced
knowledge and (c) a pragmatic and ethical level due to the specifically human dimension of
scientific activity. In the rest of the text, we will endeavour to highlight this third level
through analysis of the first two.
Attempting to link scientific reasoning to ethical questioning undoubtedly exposes us to
controversy, or even to a possible mix of genres. A mix that can be observed today — for
some there is ethically correct science; for others a contrario, social scientism is able to
resolve (or dissolve) ethical concerns. In addition, and to prevent unnecessary
misunderstanding, it is also advisable to clearly specify what we mean by ethics in order to
establish solid bases for dialogue.
2. Reductionism, an essential approach
When associating the term ethics with scientific reasoning, the nature of scientific activity
first needs to be specified. On an ontological level, this involves attempting to describe a
reality as faithfully as possible and, consequently, determining what type of being is
therefore being apprehended. Whether in physics, chemistry or even biology, it is a reality (a
particle, a molecule, a tissue, etc.) that is only perceived and described through often very
sophisticated theories and instruments. In addition, corpuscular physics and quantum
mechanics have diversified the very concepts and criteria of reality, considering in particular
the absolute "non-separability" between space and time, matter and energy, etc.
Be that as it may, any description of reality seems to remain faithful to a hierarchical
principle that aims to define higher levels from more basic ones. In this way, and to remain
in the realm of physics, "all material reality is supposed to be explained at a fundamental
level by quarks, leptons (electrons, muons and taus) and four fundamental interactions that
account for the forces exerted between matter particles" ("toute la réalité matérielle est
censée s’expliquer au niveau fondamental par des quarks, des leptons (électrons, muons et
tauons) et quatre interactions fondamentales qui rendent compte des forces exercées entre
détermine ce qui prescrit à l'action - pouvoir d'introduire des déterminations nouvelles dans
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les particules de matière".) (Lambert, 1999, p.16-17). The same applies to chemistry and
biology, which can therefore be "reduced", according to the same logic, to physics; and to
economics which, in particular, borrows from Newtonian physics to represent initial
estimates of market interactions.
In this way, the reductionist approach involves representing (or reducing) the reality under
consideration with a hierarchised set of systems based on levels that are more and more
basic but are still objectivable and verifiable. Reductionism today controls all scientific
reasoning; this furthermore enables the required gaps to be filled between the various
different disciplines involved, for example, in molecular modelling: physics, chemistry,
biology, medicine, etc., which means that it is an emblematic reduction method.
The reductionist concept therefore increasingly strives for the more basic — or fundamental
— level to increasingly guarantee "control of reality", and consequently, efficient human
intervention on this reality. The incomparable broadening of technical opportunities made
possible over the last two centuries (harnessing of energy, vaccines, genetic improvement of
animal and plant species, etc.) bears witness, if need be, to the success of this scientific
methodology. How can we move away from this without exposing ourselves to syncretic
gnosis (Lambert, 1999, p.44)? That is to say, to methods and concepts of knowledge
reserved for a few informed people and sometimes mixing with esoteric trends.
Operating in this way, scientific reasoning substitutes for the studied item of reality a kind of
pure object, supposed to extract objective characteristics from reality that are empirically
verifiable and capable of advancing knowledge (Ladrière, 2001, p.155). The universe of
elementary particles, subject to strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravitational interactions,
constitutes a type of "pure object", a scientific reduction of the studied reality or more
commonly, a model. The latter is based on supposedly acquired certainties and a spectrum of
hypotheses to be checked that are supposed to define the fields of knowledge yet to be
explored.
The reduction procedure is governed as much by the observed reality as by the analytical
instruments validated by scientific practice at the time. As a result of these instruments'
complexity, in particular, or IT intermediation, there can be a significant distance between
la réalité - ses orientations authentiques") (Ladrière, 2001).
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researchers and their research object. Such is the case with molecular modelling which,
through a sort of inventory logic, is supposed to be working towards an acceleration in
knowledge or even exhaustivity. In the short term, however, it is the predictive ability of the
model that is being tested, as reduction appears all the more relevant since it proves capable
of reconstructing and recovering, as much as possible, the phenomenon in its entire reality.
3. Reductionism and evacuation of meaning
At the source of ethical questioning associated with scientific reasoning lies the evacuation
of meaning brought about by reductionism. In fact, by isolating the properties of an object or
real phenomenon that are deemed objective, the reduction procedure evacuates its existential
meaning 3 in which is contained, according to Ladrière (2001, p.177), its ethical meaning.
In other words, the reductionist view of reality provided by the sciences removes any
reference to a meaning that cannot be defined from a reduction to the elementary; scientific
reductions only refer to the part of reality studied, they are not the symbol (sign) of any
other reality.
This loss of meaning brought about by reductionism is today more clearly perceived for two
reasons. On the one hand, the broadening of scientific knowledge is coupled with
fragmentation of this knowledge. Frequently ensuing from the reduction method, knowledge
fragmentation struggles to infer and explain certain complexities using elementary levels:
for example, the emergence of cells from a physico-chemical point of view. This
fragmentation of knowledge leads, as if mechanically, to the fragmentation of meaning that
we give to the research activity and its goals. On the other hand, progress in knowledge
makes the question of the meaning of things, beings and their existence all the more
pressing; in other words, the question of "how" that preoccupies science fuels the question
of "why".
3 Ladrière, 2001, p.177
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For all that, is it really up to scientists to decipher and give meaning to their reductions, to
"re-enchant" a world that they have helped, according to some, to disenchant?4 … The mix
of genre soon arises if we assimilate scientific reasoning with "metaphysics"5. There is also
a strong temptation to take the reductionist approach out of its proper sphere. Gouyon (p.38)
thus puts forward the idea according to which "individuals are artifices invented by genes to
reproduce" ("les individus sont des artifices inventés par les gènes pour se reproduire"): here
reductionist inspiration provides neither more nor less than a shift from the subject of
interest, or even from the being of reason, which is therefore no longer the individual but the
gene prompted to reproduce and perpetuate. This ruins the idea of a certain harmony in
nature (although objectivable); the latter, on the contrary, grows weaker, having been
reduced to the scene of a vast conflict between genes and alleles of the same organism or
different organisms. As noted by Lambert (1999, p.24-25), however, science "sees
everything it has to see but does not see everything" ("voit tout ce qu'elle doit voir mais ne
voit pas le tout"); it actually attains reality but as if by projection.
4 Cf. on this subject the quotation from Jean-Pierre Changeux in L'homme neuronal, Paris,
Fayard, (1983) p.51: "…physicalist attempts that involve researching the physico-chemical
bases of cerebral functions prove fruitful as a rule. The pneuma — first animal spirits and
then nervous fluids — becomes animal electricity then potential for action and finally a
transfer of electrically charged ions. Highlighting the intervention of neurotransmitters in
synapsis is another example of this. Confronted with the cogitations of spiritualists, this
reasoning neither appeals nor comforts. But this is beside the subject; our aim is to
understand how the brain works." ("…les tentatives physicalistes qui consistent à rechercher
les bases physico-chimiques des fonctions cérébrales, s'avèrent en règle générale fécondes.
Le pneuma, d'abord esprits animaux, puis fluides nerveux, devient électricité animale, puis
potentiel d'action, enfin transfert d'ions chargés électriquement. La mise en évidence de
l'intervention des neurotransmetteurs à la synapse en est un autre exemple. Confrontées aux
cogitations des spiritualistes, ces démarches ne séduisent ni ne réconfortent. Mais notre
propos n'est pas là ; il est de comprendre comment fonctionne le cerveau.").
5 Metaphysics: "Rational research, the subject of which is knowledge of the absolute being,
the causes of the universe and the first principles of knowledge" ("Recherche rationnelle
ayant pour objet la connaissance de l'être absolu, des causes de l'univers et des principes
premiers de la connaissance") (Petit Robert dictionary).
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4. Reductionism's risky borrowing
The history of science also shows that the adopted reduction method is sometimes imported
from one science to another. Here, genetics provides an emblematic case that today comes
up against the known risks of such borrowing. Supposedly representing the physical basis of
heredity, genes here constitute the pure object, a scientific reduction of the studied reality.
André Pichot, author of Histoire de la notion de gène (Pichot, 1999; Pichot, 2002) dates the
emergence of the notion back to the work of Weismann (1892) and De Vries (1889). Genes
are defined here as elementary particles of living matter, mainly composed of proteins, and
of which a minute part makes up the hereditary material.
It is easy to see here the loan made to physics in the form of the particle metaphor, as at the
time particle physics was rapidly developing. From this living matter particle theory, only
the commonly-used representation (i.e. the gene) has survived. With the first mathematical
research on population genetics by Johannsen (1909), the gene became a unit of calculation
for heredity; it regained materiality with Morgan (1915) who defined it as a locus, i.e. a
location on a chromosome and, thirty years later, Schrödinger gave it a physical dimension:
atoms of a macromolecule with an information function and/or a programme function.
After the particle metaphor came the IT metaphor, which is also concomitant with the
emergence of this new discipline of IT. Following the discovery of DNA as a basis of
heredity, the gene became a segment of DNA controlling synthesis of a protein at the end of
the 1950s… until it was noticed that this very synthesis was also controlled elsewhere:
hence the structural definition being abandoned for a functional one. Of course, we can put
forward the importance of the malleability of the definition but also its vagueness and this
will no doubt in return fuel social controversies linked to biotechnological innovations.
5. For a realist and critical epistemology
The above-mentioned examples of possible "flaws" in reductionism refer to the
epistemological dimension of scientific reasoning, i.e. to the concept of knowledge that
underlies this reasoning. Here we again revert to Lambert (1999) who lists various
concurrent concepts, distinguished by their ambition to achieve or not achieve the studied
reality. In this way, a conventionalist epistemology only sees science as a way of
memorising and classifying phenomena or observations, without seeking to actually attain
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reality itself. If this is the case, how can it be explained that independent knowledge efforts,
using different "conventions", lead to the same description of regularities of reality; this is
proof enough that reality reveals itself and offers itself to the plural and convergent efforts
of scientific research. Conversely, a positivist or scientistic epistemology claims to attain the
entirety of the real and scientific reasoning therefore becomes the only reasoning of truth
about reality. This notion is obviously exclusive of any other method of knowledge, making
any dialogue with religious or metaphysical discourse, for example, futile. This is why for
Auguste Comte's positivism, religious belief is nothing but the incarnation of our ignorance:
the latter does not have to be metamorphosed but must be progressively resorbed by the
pursuit of the knowledge effort. And this effort does not accept any limits other than the
cognitive limits of the human mind.
As soon as supporters of scientism accept scientific reasoning as the only source of truth, it
follows that the scientistic notion could prove to be totalising. Besides, this notion of
knowledge cannot attain certain real phenomena, such as precisely the meaning given to an
act, a situation, etc. and this, through the reductionism used. In fact, and as again noted by
Lambert (1999, p.29), the very process of reduction destroys the element of reality that I
wish to study: "By the very act of objectivation, reduction, analysis, I destroy the meaning
that I claimed to grasp. A sign of affection broken down into mechanical movements and
variations in hormone levels completely loses the meaning that it carries." ("Par l'acte même
d'objectivation, de réduction, d'analyse, je détruis la signification que je prétendais
appréhender. Un signe d'affection décomposé en mouvements mécaniques et en variations
de taux d'hormones perd complètement le sens dont il est porteur.")
The limits, or even flaws, of reductionism therefore invite us to adopt a realist
epistemology: scientific activity attains reality and provides us with definite knowledge. But
for Lambert this is critical realism. In fact, we have not invented reality but it reveals itself
and offers itself to scientific activity, which provides us with knowledge that is always
partial. Moreover, and as seen in the example of the gene, the reduction method is not
neutral and later requires a reproduction of the phenomena studied. The way we gain
knowledge carries the mark of the knowing subject; the theoretical frameworks that we
create and which are used for the above-mentioned reproduction, always contain a little of
the arbitrary, the subjective… knowledge is only provided through frameworks built by
humans, and is therefore influenced by their certainties, convictions, claims, beliefs, etc.
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It is this same background that in a way determines researchers' deontological concerns. In
short, science is not a disembodied activity, it is a human activity, a fully human and social
one. Proof of this can be found in the economic theory of the induced technical progress,
according to which scientific and technical innovations are "induced" by the corporate,
social and political context. Or even the choice of research themes, which can be influenced
by researchers' convictions. Such an assertion provides another link with ethics.
6. Science and ethics: shared reason?
The ambivalence of some technological innovations on human well-being, the growing
difficulty in dissociating science from its applications (i.e. technoscience), the importance of
the economic interests at stake, the scale of socio-economic changes induced by these
innovations, all this: (i) on the one hand, catalyses the current quest for meaning that we
want to give our continuing manipulation of nature, and by nature we also mean the human
species; (ii) on the other hand, questions the cut-and-dried assertion of science's ethical
neutrality and (iii) finally relates to the freedom and responsibility of researchers6.
6.1. Nature, moral authority?7
Supported by a Cartesian vision, the "scientific view" of nature has practically abandoned
another view which involved apprehending nature as a reserve of meaning, an entity able to
throw light on the ethical meaning of situations, in short a moral authority.
Nature, a moral authority: this is admittedly a recurring, plural position that is as old as the
hills (Brague, 1999). At the extreme, it can lapse into radical empiricism where ethics is
reduced to compliance with the scientific data drawn from observation and experimentation,
in short positivist ethics. Or else into radical ecologism in which human action is required to
comply with demands made by nature itself, as it is "concerned" about its future and
6 As Ricœur emphasises (2000): "There is ethics primarily because, by the grave act of
being free, I tear myself away in the course of things, from nature and its laws" ("Il y a
éthique d'abord parce que, par l'acte grave de position de liberté, je m'arrache au cours des
choses, à la nature et à ses lois").
7 This section refers to Vermersch and Matthee (2001) in extenso.
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survival: here we recognise the trends linked to deep ecology. Such options disclaim in fine
a real space for human freedom and responsibility and explain the excessive caution, or even
underlying refusal, to recognise that nature has any moral dimension likely to shed light on
our individual and collective action.
In this way, the expression of a mathematical rationality within nature is generally
recognised by the scientific community; the reason for which we still call it the "cosmos" to
precisely mean the existence of a specific order and integrity. Therefore evoking an ethical
rationality within nature is coined as finalism… or even as an archaic, irrational and
dangerous position. Although obviously nature cannot be reduced to the nostalgic Garden of
Eden, it nevertheless carries its mark, i.e. a possible and actual synergy between scientific
and ethical rationality. In other words, between the logos within nature — which is
gradually deciphered by scientific effort — and rational human action.
It is from this angle that we reconsider the words of G. Paillotin, the former president of
I.N.R.A (French National Institute for Agronomic Research): "I don't want to favour a rather
simplistic finalism. I simply note a coherence between the laws of nature and that the latter
is not in complete disharmony with our own social coherences." ("Je ne veux pas faire du
finalisme un peu simpliste. Je constate simplement qu'il y a de la cohérence entre les lois de
la nature et que celle-ci n'est pas en complète dysharmonie avec nos propres cohérences
sociales.") (1997). So let us again look at nostalgia for the Garden of Eden, conveyed by
nature itself, or simply the image of the garden that evokes a place, or a dwelling where we
like to stay. Let us relate this to the very etymology of the term ethics that refers to the
following assertion, where "to dwell", "to live" in a just moral action requires a "dwelling",
"habitat", or more specifically a community of shared convictions. The latter is embodied in
an ethos, which we can initially define here as all the moral habits and norms that structure
our societies.
Nature apprehended partly as a garden or dwelling in a way provides an outline or
prefiguration of this ethos, which is both appropriated and passed on by human activity.
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Apprehended in this way, nature and its future also contain a degree of uncertainty8, a
visible guarantee of human freedom and creativity.
It is therefore fitting to restore a philosophy of nature or more precisely hermeneutics9 of
nature: "While carefully respecting acquisitions of science, this would attempt to give it an
intelligibility, a meaning that goes beyond these acquisitions. It only prolongs the process of
researching the meaning which begins at the heart of the systemic approach but cannot end
in it" ("Celle-ci, tout en respectant scrupuleusement les acquis des sciences, tenterait d'en
donner une intelligibilité, un sens qui les débordent. Elle ne fait que prolonger le mouvement
de recherche de sens qui commence au cœur de la démarche systémique mais qui ne peut
s'achever en elle") (Lambert, 1999). This refers to a broader perspective, i.e. uniting nature
in its development and its future with human action, particularly in its ethical aspects, a
perspective that clearly puts scientists in the front line.
6.2. Ethical concerns and reinterpretation
We mentioned above that through the "reduction" (i.e. modelling) procedures that is uses,
scientific reasoning strips the situations to be analysed of their existential meaning; meaning
in which the ethical meaning is contained. In other words, to justify its understanding,
scientific reasoning rules out the presumptions of the realm of perception and the affective.
This explains why the ethical meaning of situations, made possible through scientific
activity, is no longer immediately obvious to ethical intuition (Ladrière, 2001, p.149-150);
this is observed for example in social controversies linked to new biotechnological
possibilities.
However, because ethics is the aim of the good life, it is only possible to rule on the ethical
meaning of a situation if it takes on an existential meaning. Consequently assuming the
8 Uncertainty as authorised ex ante by evolution theories.
9 Hermeneutics of nature: understood here to mean the research for a meaning within nature
itself.
10
world of technical objects and the contributions of phenomenology as his starting point10,
Ladrière (2001) suggests a lead to remove the ethical indetermination thus highlighted,
through the three fundamentals of human existence — corporeality, temporality and
otherness. It is in fact via the body that our existence engages with the world; it is with time
that our existence develops its own history and achievement; our existence is in short "coexistence" with others: it bears its own responsibility while partly, directly or indirectly
assuming that of others for the sake of solidarity. Ladrière uses the word "reinterpretation"
for this ambitious approach, which according to him is more in keeping with the demands of
rationality than decisionism, i.e. the option according to which a decision-making and
prescriptive social authority ends up becoming a substitute for everyday ethical standards.
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