Moral Issues in the Natural Sciences and Technologies
Moral Issues in the Natural Sciences and Technologies

Author: Jurie van den Heever

Publisher: AOSIS

Published: 2019-12-12

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1928396844

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This book reflects academically on important and relevant natural scientific disciplines, important technologies and related media to determine and communicate the moral issues and challenges within those specific fields of study, and how to deal with them morally and from a multidimensional South African context. It aims to add scientific, technological and ethical value, locally and globally, by reflecting mainly from the viewpoint of a specific scholars, writing about the most pressing moral issues or challenges raised by problems within their specific field of study. It is written mainly from a qualitative methodological perspective, including autobiographical and participatory views. The co-authors present in respective chapters their research systematically and intersectionally, based on profound theoretical analysis and reasoning. Current research in the basic and implied sciences and technologies requires sound ethical practice based on a defensible moral stance. Moral norms, in our view, are deeply grounded and evolved convictions about justice and injustice, right and wrong, good and bad. It is not about rules. This scholarly book combines the insights and expertise of established South African scholars from different disciplines and backgrounds. The contributors are all deeply committed to the value and validity of science and ethical practice across the moral spectrum. Open and responsible discussions around this topic can lead to the introduction of moral guidelines and regulations to protect the rights of individuals, animals and the environment, while simultaneously facilitating the growth of scientific practice. This collected work, with its very specific and carefully selected grouping of academic fields, aims to innovatively assist in alleviating the shortage of academic publications reflecting on the moral issues in these specific fields.

Moral Issues in the Natural Science and Technologies
Moral Issues in the Natural Science and Technologies

Author: Chris Jones

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 9781928396857

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This book reflects academically on important and relevant natural scientific disciplines, important technologies and related media to determine and communicate the moral issues and challenges within those specific fields of study, and how to deal with them morally and from a multidimensional South African context. It aims to add scientific, technological and ethical value, locally and globally, by reflecting mainly from the viewpoint of a specific scholars, writing about the most pressing moral issues or challenges raised by problems within their specific field of study. It is written mainly from a qualitative methodological perspective, including autobiographical and participatory views. The co-authors present in respective chapters their research systematically and intersectionally, based on profound theoretical analysis and reasoning. Current research in the basic and implied sciences and technologies requires sound ethical practice based on a defensible moral stance. Moral norms, in our view, are deeply grounded and evolved convictions about justice and injustice, right and wrong, good and bad. It is not about rules. This scholarly book combines the insights and expertise of established South African scholars from different disciplines and backgrounds. The contributors are all deeply committed to the value and validity of science and ethical practice across the moral spectrum. Open and responsible discussions around this topic can lead to the introduction of moral guidelines and regulations to protect the rights of individuals, animals and the environment, while simultaneously facilitating the growth of scientific practice. This collected work, with its very specific and carefully selected grouping of academic fields, aims to innovatively assist in alleviating the shortage of academic publications reflecting on the moral issues in these specific fields

Science and Technology Ethics
Science and Technology Ethics

Author: Raymond E. E.Spier

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2003-08-27

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 1134753721

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Science and Technology Ethics re-examines the ethics by which we live and asks the question: do we have in place the ethical guidelines through which we can incorporate these developments with the minimum of disruption and disaffection? It assesses the ethical systems in place and proposes new approaches to our scientific and engineering processes and products, our social contacts, biology and informatics, the military industry and our environmental responsibilities. The volume is multidisciplinary and reflects the aim of the book to promote a state of the art assessment of these issues. Science and Technology Ethics is a much-needed discussion of the scientific developments that have major effects on the way we live. It will be of interest to all students of science and technology and all professionals involved with administrating laws in these fields.

The Ethics of Invention: Technology and the Human Future
The Ethics of Invention: Technology and the Human Future

Author: Sheila Jasanoff

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2016-08-30

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 0393253856

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We live in a world increasingly governed by technology—but to what end? Technology rules us as much as laws do. It shapes the legal, social, and ethical environments in which we act. Every time we cross a street, drive a car, or go to the doctor, we submit to the silent power of technology. Yet, much of the time, the influence of technology on our lives goes unchallenged by citizens and our elected representatives. In The Ethics of Invention, renowned scholar Sheila Jasanoff dissects the ways in which we delegate power to technological systems and asks how we might regain control. Our embrace of novel technological pathways, Jasanoff shows, leads to a complex interplay among technology, ethics, and human rights. Inventions like pesticides or GMOs can reduce hunger but can also cause unexpected harm to people and the environment. Often, as in the case of CFCs creating a hole in the ozone layer, it takes decades before we even realize that any damage has been done. Advances in biotechnology, from GMOs to gene editing, have given us tools to tinker with life itself, leading some to worry that human dignity and even human nature are under threat. But despite many reasons for caution, we continue to march heedlessly into ethically troubled waters. As Jasanoff ranges across these and other themes, she challenges the common assumption that technology is an apolitical and amoral force. Technology, she masterfully demonstrates, can warp the meaning of democracy and citizenship unless we carefully consider how to direct its power rather than let ourselves be shaped by it. The Ethics of Invention makes a bold argument for a future in which societies work together—in open, democratic dialogue—to debate not only the perils but even more the promises of technology.

Communicating Science Effectively
Communicating Science Effectively

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2017-03-08

Total Pages: 153

ISBN-13: 0309451051

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Science and technology are embedded in virtually every aspect of modern life. As a result, people face an increasing need to integrate information from science with their personal values and other considerations as they make important life decisions about medical care, the safety of foods, what to do about climate change, and many other issues. Communicating science effectively, however, is a complex task and an acquired skill. Moreover, the approaches to communicating science that will be most effective for specific audiences and circumstances are not obvious. Fortunately, there is an expanding science base from diverse disciplines that can support science communicators in making these determinations. Communicating Science Effectively offers a research agenda for science communicators and researchers seeking to apply this research and fill gaps in knowledge about how to communicate effectively about science, focusing in particular on issues that are contentious in the public sphere. To inform this research agenda, this publication identifies important influences â€" psychological, economic, political, social, cultural, and media-related â€" on how science related to such issues is understood, perceived, and used.

Right, Wrong and Science
Right, Wrong and Science

Author: Evandro Agazzi

Publisher: Rodopi

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 9789042009196

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Solving the problem of the negative impact of science and technology on society and the environment is indeed the greatest challenge of our time. To date, this challenge has been taken up by few professional philosophers of science, making this volume a welcome contribution to the general debate. Agazzi's treatment involves viewing modern science and technology as each constituting systems. Against the background of this approach, he provides a penetrating analysis of science, technology and ethics, and their interrelations. Agazzi sees the solution to the problem as lying in the moral sphere and including a multilateral assumption of responsibility on the part of decision makers both within and outside of science.

Science Fiction, Ethics and the Human Condition
Science Fiction, Ethics and the Human Condition

Author: Christian Baron

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-07-10

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 331956577X

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This book explores what science fiction can tell us about the human condition in a technological world, with the ethical dilemmas and consequences that this entails. This book is the result of the joint efforts of scholars and scientists from various disciplines. This interdisciplinary approach sets an example for those who, like us, have been busy assessing the ways in which fictional attempts to fathom the possibilities of science and technology speak to central concerns about what it means to be human in a contemporary world of technology and which ethical dilemmas it brings along. One of the aims of this book is to demonstrate what can be achieved in approaching science fiction as a kind of imaginary laboratory for experimentation, where visions of human (or even post-human) life under various scientific, technological or natural conditions that differ from our own situation can be thought through and commented upon. Although a scholarly work, this book is also designed to be accessible to a general audience that has an interest in science fiction, as well as to a broader academic audience interested in ethical questions.

Ethical and Philosophical Consideration of the Dual-Use Dilemma in the Biological Sciences
Ethical and Philosophical Consideration of the Dual-Use Dilemma in the Biological Sciences

Author: Seumas Miller

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2008-07-30

Total Pages: 79

ISBN-13: 1402083122

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What Is the Dual-Use Dilemma? The so-called “dual-use dilemma” arises in the context of research in the biological and other sciences as a consequence of the fact that one and the same piece of sci- tific research sometimes has the potential to be used for harm as well as for good. A dual-use dilemma is an ethical dilemma, and an ethical dilemma for the researcher (and for those who have the power or authority to assist or impede the researcher’s work, e. g. , governments). It is an ethical dilemma since it is about promoting good in the context of the potential for also causing harm, e. g. , the p- motion of health in the context of providing the wherewithal for the killing of in- cents. It is an ethical dilemma for the researcher not because he or she is aiming at anything other than a good outcome; typically, the researcher intends no harm, but only good. Rather, the dilemma arises for the researcher because of the potential actions of others. Malevolent non-researchers might steal dangerous biological agents produced by the researcher; alternatively, other researchers—or at least their governments or leadership—might use the results of the original researcher’s work for malevolent purposes. The malevolent purposes in question include bioterrorism, biowarfare and blackmail for financial gain.

Science and Babies
Science and Babies

Author: Institute of Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 1990-02-01

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 0309041368

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By all indicators, the reproductive health of Americans has been deteriorating since 1980. Our nation is troubled by rates of teen pregnancies and newborn deaths that are worse than almost all others in the Western world. Science and Babies is a straightforward presentation of the major reproductive issues we face that suggests answers for the public. The book discusses how the clash of opinions on sex and family planning prevents us from making a national commitment to reproductive health; why people in the United States have fewer contraceptive choices than those in many other countries; what we need to do to improve social and medical services for teens and people living in poverty; how couples should "shop" for a fertility service and make consumer-wise decisions; and what we can expect in the futureâ€"featuring interesting accounts of potential scientific advances.