Bilim İnsanlarının Bilime Yönelik Sorumlulukları: Bir Etik Temellendirme Önerisi

Year 2015, Issue: 3, 219 - 235, 01.12.2015

Mehmet Aközer Emel Aközer

Abstract

Bilimsel araştırma etiği üzerine 1990’ların ortalarından itibaren geliştirilen politika metinlerinde ve formel davranış kodlarında, bilim insanlarının bilime ve bilim topluluğuna yönelik sorumlulukları tanımlanırken çoğu zaman “toplumun bilime güveninin temini” gibi araçsalcı bir gerekçelendirmeyle yetinilmiştir. Bu makale bu tür sorumluluklar için Kant’ın ahlak felsefesine ve Popper’ın eleştirel usçu epistemolojisine referansla etik bir temellendirmenin olanaklılığını ve önemini ortaya koymayı amaçlamaktadır. Bilimin epistemik hedefi olan hakikatin aynı zamanda ahlaki bir ödev – saygı – konusu olarak postüle edilmesi ve bilim insanlarının hakikat arayışındaki öznel hedefleri ile o hedefler için başvurdukları araçlar ve yordamlar için “insanın mutlak içsel değeri”nin insan onurunun en yüksek sınırlayıcı koşul olarak benimsenmesi, uluslararası kabul görmüş bilim ahlakı kodlarındaki normların – etik çoğulculuğa başvurmadan – tutarlı biçimde türetilmesine imkân vermektedir. İnsanın, Kantçı koşulsuz buyruğa göre her eyleyişin nesnel ilkesi olması gereken ussal doğasının ve ahlaki özerkliğinin tanınması ve mutlak içsel değerine saygı aynı zamanda bilimin – ideolojik vb önkabullerin etkisiyle – epistemik hedefinden sapmamasının da güvencesini sunmakta, ahlak bu anlamda da anlığın bilişlerinin önünü açmaktadır. Tersine, araştırma problemi kurmaktan hipotez oluşturmaya ve bulguları anlamlandırmaya kadar herhangi bir araştırma evresinde insanın mutlak içsel değeriyle bağdaşmayan önkabullere yer verilmesi, bir araştırma programının epistemik kusurluluğunun ve kaçınılmaz başarısızlığının öngöstergesi olarak alınabilir. İnsanın değerini görelileştirmenin bir araştırma programını başından epistemik kusurlulukla malul edip başarısızlığa mahkûm etmesine örnek olarak yazıda, genetik belirlenimciliğin bilim alanında 19. yüzyılın kabaca son çeyreğinden günümüze kadar süren nüfuzunun sonuçları irdelenmektedir

Keywords

Bilimsel araştırma etiği, Etik temellendirme, Öjenizm, Genetik belirlenimcilik

Scientists’ Responsibilities Towards Science: A Proposal for an Ethical Justification

Abstract

In policy statements on ethics of scientific research and in codes of conduct developed since the mid–1990s it has often been deemed sufficient to provide an instrumentalist justification of scientists’ responsibilities towards science and the scientific community, addressing essentially the need “to build trust between science and society.” This paper aims to demonstrate the feasibility and importance of an ethical justification of such responsibilities with reference to Kant’s moral philosophy and Popper’s critical rationalist epistemology that has its roots in the former. It argues that it is possible to derive internationally recognized standards for research integrity in a consistent manner without recourse to ethical pluralism by postulating respect for truth – science’s epistemic goal – as a moral duty, and by adopting the “absolute inner worth” dignity of each and every human being as the supreme limiting condition for scientists’ subjective goals in their search for truth, and for the means and methods employed for achieving these goals. Recognition of human being’s rational nature and moral autonomy and respect for her absolute inner worth, which, in accordance with the Kantian categorical imperative, ought to be the objective principle of all action, also provides an insurance against temptations of ideological prejudgements, by fixing scientific inquiry on the route to its epistemic goal, and thus advances cognitions of the understanding. Conversely, incorporating presuppositions irreconcilable with this absolute worth at any stage of research, from hypothesis formation to the interpretation of findings, may be considered as an advance indication of a research program’s epistemic defectiveness and its inevitable failure. As an exemplary incident of fateful programmatic failure caused by relativizing human worth in a research initiative, the paper traces the consequences of the influence that genetic determinism has exerted on science from roughly the last quarter of the 19th century to the present

Keywords

Scientific research ethics, Ethical justification, Eugenics, Genetic determinism

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