- #1
FireStorm000
- 169
- 0
I know that philosophy, metaphysics, and the like are outside of the scope of this forum, but it seems to me that there are many cases where choices in the sciences come down to a question of ethics.
Regardless of the fact that it is not a scientific subject, it remains very intimately tied to the practice of science and engineering. We can't really have a complete discussion if we avoid such questions.
It could be interesting to open such issues to discussion. I'm not looking for open season to explore philosophy, so much as a forum of applied ethics, that is, how can we apply the concept of right and wrong to the professional decisions we make in the sciences. We could also debate with certain ideas already accepted as a premiss; we could, for example, say that one is not allowed to take the existence or non existence of any God or gods as a certainty, and thus it could not be used as a basis from which to argue(same goes for anything else which defies experimentation), which would make the moderation of discussions at least possible. The scientific method would also be taken as a premiss, which would keep things in fairly moderate territory.
Thoughts?
Regardless of the fact that it is not a scientific subject, it remains very intimately tied to the practice of science and engineering. We can't really have a complete discussion if we avoid such questions.
It could be interesting to open such issues to discussion. I'm not looking for open season to explore philosophy, so much as a forum of applied ethics, that is, how can we apply the concept of right and wrong to the professional decisions we make in the sciences. We could also debate with certain ideas already accepted as a premiss; we could, for example, say that one is not allowed to take the existence or non existence of any God or gods as a certainty, and thus it could not be used as a basis from which to argue(same goes for anything else which defies experimentation), which would make the moderation of discussions at least possible. The scientific method would also be taken as a premiss, which would keep things in fairly moderate territory.
Thoughts?