[CCoE Notice] Ethics in Science Lecture Series: Ethical Paradoxes of Control: Science, Engineering, and the Expansion of Moral Responsibility

[Grayson, Audrey A]

Title: Ethical Paradoxes of Control: Science, Engineering, and the Expansion of Moral Responsibility
Speaker: Rachelle Hollander, Ph.D., National Academy of Engineering
Date:  Monday, March 3
Time:  11:00 am to 12:30 pm
Cost: FREE and open to the public
Location:  Philip G Hoffman Hall, Room 232 (PGH-232) Main Campus, University of Houston
Contact and Phone Number:  Ioannis Pavlidis, Ph.D., 713-743-0101
Link:  http://www.uh.edu/ethicsinscience/Seminars/Rachelle-Hollander.php

Summary: People value increased control. Science and engineering do increase control and their marketing emphasizes that potential. Historically, support for science and engineering rests on the view that they will improve human well-being and enabling control is part of that. Unfortunately or fortunately, increased control brings with it both untoward effects (which can be interpreted as diminished control), and human demands for higher levels of both control and moral responsibility. This cycle may be vicious or virtuous - sometimes both. An example of a virtuous cycle is the increasing demands for humanitarian assistance - control over the technologies that can move goods such as food and water make this assistance possible. An example of a vicious cycle is the diminishing societal control over drone and biosynthetic technologies that are part and parcel of what can be called scientific and technological advances. The fundamental ethical paradox being referred to here is created by the disparity between a natural (hoped for) assumption that science and engineering control would diminish the need for moral responsibility, and the actual result, which is always to augment that need.

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