I would like to expand the argument I started to make last class that objective knowledge can neither be inherently dangerous nor safe. I think this topic came up in our discussion of whether or not a teacher should shield certain students from a specific piece of knowledge because of immoral implications. This issue fascinates me, but in this post I'd like to focus on the nature of objective knowledge itself.
I make the ontological assumption that there exists a universe external to myself. I consider objective knowledge to be truths about this universe that have passed public tests of validity. Nuclear fission is one example of objective knowledge. Objective knowledge helps us understand the universe in which we live. The process of gathering objective knowledge forms the basis of all branches of mathematics and hard science.
Properties of the universe, in and of themselves, can neither harm nor help anyone. Their existence is neither inherently good nor inherently bad. In order to begin categorizing these properties as good or bad, we have to learn of their existence. This objective knowledge is our understanding of the properties of the universe, and it is closely related to but distinctly separate from the properties themselves. (Our observation of the properties may change them, but that is an issue for another essay)
So now we are once removed from the properties themselves, in that we have objective knowledge about them. Imagine, then, a third layer: we project the value judgments required to determine something's goodness or badness onto objective knowledge. The distinction between helpful or harmful is not a characteristic of the objective knowledge, nor is it an aspect of the properties themselves.
Let's return to nuclear fission to illustrate this idea. Nuclear fission is a chemical process that occurs in man-made situations and the natural world, although the latter happens less frequently. This process is inherently neither harmful nor helpful. I argue that the knowledge gained from learning about spontaneous nuclear fission and conducting nuclear fission experiments is neither good nor bad. (It may be harder to argue that the experiments themselves are also benign because of the risks involved, immense financial cost, the waste material produced... there are probably additional reasons.)
Harm and help can only be determined when the knowledge of nuclear fission is applied to social interactions, whether within one society in particular or all of humanity. Knowledge of nuclear fission can be used to make nuclear weapons, which have controversial moral implications in Western society because they have the power to destroy life, and we value life. But this doesn't make nuclear fission dangerous knowledge.
That's all for now. Any thoughts?
Walk in Beauty ~ Lisa
Nice job! A couple of thoughts:
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your argument for the moral neutrality of nature. This is a widely held view. We might, however, distinguish between nature as such and our knowledge of it. The mere fact that something is the case is either harmful or beneficial simply as a matter of material fact, whereas since the getting and using of knowledge is a social process, knowledge always comes with built-in moral implications.
That is, I think you overstate your case a little when you say: "Properties of the universe, in and of themselves, can neither harm nor help anyone." Objective, structural features of the world can certainly be dangerous or beneficial to human bodies irrespective of our judgments about them (you'd notice this -- or not -- if a tree fell on you, but either way it would be so). You are certainly correct, though, that "Their existence is neither inherently good nor inherently bad." Good and bad in the moral sense arises in the process of our finding out their objective properties, and deciding what or what not to do with them.
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I do want to think about this:
ReplyDeleteIf nature is morally neutral, how do humans as part of nature figure in to that neutrality?
and this:
If a particular knowledge is morally neutral, but we can only come upon it through immoral or questionable means (such as, in your example, through hazardous experiments that create radioactive waste), is the knowledge itself really neutral?