A Study On Science And Technology Ethics

Regarding science and technology ethics,there are on-going researches from all perspectives nationally and internationally. These types of research not only focus on providing practical strategies in resolving real life situations but also make great efforts in attempt to maintain its high standard as philosophy. However,it is not an easy task to keep this meta-stable balance consistently throughout the evolving history of science and technology ethics. As a result,science and technology ethics has undergone many phases of transitions from empiricism and positivism,case study to theoretical or philosophy research. Those researches are being in so large dilemma that often being labeled as attempting an ineffective solution by the scientific and technological circles or lacking of philosophy depth and heights by the ethical circles. At present,its main focus is to analyze the real life situation using a single variable and one-sided point of view. Within this limited research range, whether it is based upon the viewpoints from scientific behavior or social ethic norm,it is very challenging to find the equilibrium between the advances in science and technology and the ethic standards.In China,there are many active and hot topics in the study of science and technology ethics under a broader scientific community of applied ethics. Due to these very active discussions across disciplines,it brings people to think philosophically:What is science and technology ethics? Does it actually exist? If there is science and technology ethics indeed,how would it provide consolidate directions or countermeasures to the very complex , sophisticated,inter and intra connected issues in the area of science and technology ethics,etc.? Especially there are some undesirable anti-academic morality behavior in the scientific community while there is not enough emphasis or critical thinking involved in the governmental decision making process when it comes to science and technology ethics. All of the above points to this very fact,which is the research and education of science and technology ethics,are out paced by requirements imposed due to the rapid development of society.Therefore,this thesis proposes the following changes: the research of science and technology ethics needs to be redirected from its point of view of pure ethical morality to a much broader base that reflects the idealism of zoology, ethical morality,and self responsibility; reposition the science and technology as ways of human's living styles and means and take it as a learning experience resulting from human's practice courses or cognitive thinking, to start the research of science and technology ethics by focusing on human's true self interest,moral value,and the strive to achieve all-round and free development of human beings. Consequently, this cognitive starting point leads to the logical starting point for the science and technology ethics, which changes the perception of the science and technology ethics from its past of treating ethical issues of science and technology as a study object to science and technology ethics as an integrity, in turn, the theoretical issues of science and technology ethics can be investigated and studied to its full extent.Based upon the theoretical stance of Marxist philosophy of science and technology as the precondition,along with the appropriate understanding and distinction of hierarchy regarding ethical issues of science and technology and the utilizing thoughts deduced from the research of science and technology ethics,further building upon the introduction of the relationship dimensional degree between science and human being,leading the path to the essence of science and technology ethics– the structure of science and technology ethics – the evaluation of the value of science and technology ethics– the discipline construction of science and technology ethics as a logical writing building block,this thesis may be able to remedy the deficiencies caused by long overdue lack of proper structured study and research conducted on science and technology ethics. In addition , we are able to achieve preliminary confirmation, perspective and construction in the areas of the issues raised by meta-theory from the science and technology ethics in terms of its nature, structure, value, critical evaluation, and the subject benchmark and science structure. In the meantime,when taking the new perspective in studying the science and technology ethics as integrity on top of the newly established innovation in research and critical analytical thinking skills,immediate attention is focused on achieving all-round and free development of human beings in the High-Tech Age,which creates the preliminary basis for the outline of research in the area of science and technology ethics. This thesis's own brand of new growth-point is just here.This thesis is composed of five sections in addition to the introduction section.Introduction section,analyzing the present research situation of science and technology ethics nationally and internationally,it is author's belief that the issues in the science and technology ethics are the main focal points of current and future research and study in theoretical focus. Based upon the limited discussion and research conducted so far in terms of basic implication, study object,subject benchmark,and study methods for the development of the science and technology ethics,it demonstrates that this subject matter is not very well studied. For such an important topic that affects how human beings behavior in the High-Tech Age,itself presents this great need that it should be further researched,discussed,and studied to build up the knowledge base in order to be ready for the challenges that this 21st century brings to our society. Thus the mechanism,content and study methods of this dissertation will be presented in introduction.Section one,through the analysis of the ideas and the reasons for the science and technology ethics utilizing the retrospective view basis, visits the times and backgrounds that fertilizes the issues of science and technology ethics and investigates the related causes for its generation. The development of science and technology ethics in the human society is a historic process. It is an inevitable outcome as the development and progress made in the social production and vocational specialization converges with the combination of the general rules in the social ethics and the vocational practice courses. Its development history correlates well the development of science and technology but also kept in pace which is governed by the overall effect of the triangle relationship among the science and technology, production relations, and social moral. Based upon six major factors whether it is internal or external to the science and technology, this section attempts to analyze their effects one by one for the generation of the science and technology ethics. With the above analysis for the further evaluation of the research of science and technology ethics,it provides the ground work defining the study in the realm of realistic inevitability. This section showcases the thesis's thought foundation and spirit resources.Section two,building on the analysis for the current understanding of the existence of science and technology ethics,proposes a new perspective research point of view,redefines the concept and study scope for the science and technology ethics,emphasizes the specific nature of the science and technology ethics,and explores its inherent behavior habits generated from this very specific nature. The major issue in the research of science and technology ethics area,is that it either studies the value of"positive and negative function"from the pure scientific and technology facet or emphasizes the scientist's self-discipline and regulation from the pure social ethics point of view,essentially it is separating the two inseparable activities,recognize and transform activities from each other, which is not a complete picture either way in the essence for true study of science and technology ethics. This thesis is based upon Marxist's scientific view of practice, takes the scientific practice as a combinational effect of recognition and transformation activities thorough the forged integrity by regulating the activities mutually within the social relationships that permeate and overlap with each other , and emphasizes"science and technology ethics"as one whole integrity to study the interactions between human beings and its coexisting environments. In other words,considering the interactions between"science and technology and human beings"as the true nature of the science and technology ethics, it is this prominent distinction serving as the basis for the further analysis of hierarchy in meta-theory. Consequently, the inherent specific properties for the science and technology ethics, its common trait and differences in relation to social ethical phenomenon,and its revelation in its actual external manifestations are further explored. This section forms the most important theoretical foundation for the entire thesis; it is also the new discovery in the theoretical research and study for science and technology ethics. In addition, the rest of thesis is further developed based upon these basics from this main theme.Section three,in review of the basis of the human being's subjectivity and vicissitude in modern times,its perception of post-modernism deconstruct the human for being the major factor affecting the science and technology ethics, analyzes the imbalance in structure for science and technology ethics, which leads to the issues of science and technology ethics,and redesigns the structure in the science and technology ethics. It is this thesis's point of view, There must be limitations created by constructing the main theme and structure for science and technology ethics solely based upon the scientific community as the"little science",it is no wonder why rules and regulations derived under traditional ethical standards are losing its influential power or even perceived as failures when comes to deal with new conditions and issues. By applying the new view of"big science",this thesis proposes that science and technology shall include professional community, vocational community,and service community as an overall"big community"and the ethics shall include the economic ethics,responsibility ethics,and eco-reason ethics as the overall constituents to the ethics,then merging the above two branches seamlessly to form the appropriate new basic structure as basis for science and technology ethics. The above proposed hierarchical structure of science and technology ethics enables itself as an integrity to self regulate its incentive system from its institutional supply , promotes mutual interactions between ethical responsibilities of moral norm and its external common value purpose,fully demonstrates its special properties of being ecological and hierarchical. The preventability and prospective servers as the key internal aspects of science and technology ethics,in turn,it leads to the responsibility as the central focal point from the structure of science and technology ethics. This process is the distribution of the relationships between science and human beings which eventually yields the basis for harmonization.Section four, using the perspective of Marxism value, taking ecological philosophy and systems science as basis, proposes the idea of establishing eco-system equilibrium between"science and technology and human beings, nature,and society",and constructs a scientific model in the evaluation of value of science and technology ethics,which is the combination of utilization of control as guideline and the use of development as the other guideline. This thesis studies the"value"governed attribute based upon the relation of subject and object, proposes the"four-dimensional theory"for the value construction of science and technology ethics. It is believed that the evaluation of value in the science and technology ethics must follow the basic roles of"truth-gist, goodness-oriented,beauty-advocating and responsibility-guiding", to achieve the behaviors of"ultimate existence","ultimate explanation",and"ultimate value"which is called the"ultimate concern"in the ontology of philosophy. Meanwhile, taking into consideration that the evaluation of value in science and technology ethics is based upon the human being's cognitive activity, building upon the people's inherent knowledge base,ability,and self preference, as a result, the evidence/information presented in the evaluation of value is not going to be fully accurate,or complete,and even with some grayness. Therefore, using the Marxism value as a guide combining with the astounding achievements in current research in chaos theory , the philosophy of value, etc.,this thesis creates a model used in the evaluation of value in the science and technology ethics,furthermore,utilizing the interactions to evaluate the extent of the overlapping parts for the paired parties,to determine the combination coefficient, to truly ensure accurate and unbiased quantitative evaluation of value in the science and technology ethics. This section showcases the combination effect of humanities and natural science; it is a new test drive in the study of the issues in the evaluation of value.Section five,considering the variability in the issues involved in the science and technology ethics,there is no consensus in fact more of disagreement among people for what is the science and technology ethics? This leads to the confusion of whether or not the science and technology ethics is an independent scientific discipline. This thesis makes great efforts explaining the contemporary existence and development of science and technology ethics, which proves that the contemporary rejuvenation of science and technology ethics is the logic necessity of ethics evolution, the practical necessity of science-technology progress, and interior necessity of humanity's self-expression.In summary, treating the new paradigm from the research of"science and technology ethics"as a study unit requires going outside-of-the-box thinking style,breaking from the limitation of isolated scientific filed to achieve the great mingle effect of science and technology with nature, society,mankind,and mathematics and the system science, information philosophy,etc. to fulfill the close collaboration among the scientist, socialist,and philosopher. On the contrary,if we neglect the"science and technology ethics"as integrity from the study perspective,it would be impossible to achieve the explanation based upon reality for the issues involved in science and technology ethics. Therefore, it would be even harder to reach the new grand research level from current research field. In another word, this thesis is attempt to do some theoretical innovation in the field of the science and technology ethics.