Ethical Judgments in the Arts and the Natural Sciences

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Ethical judgments limit the methods available in the production of knowledge in both the arts and the natural sciences. Discuss.

When talking about ethics we have to take in account that it is based on the socially standardized concept of some things being good and some things being bad. Therefore what might be seen as socially unethical arts for some people, in another society or in another time, it probably won’t be so. The same is true for the natural sciences. And even if we take our western society as a base, there are some aspects of ethics and some specific topics of which people do not have a standardized opinion. The idea of it being ethical or not depends on thebeliefs of every individual.

In this essay I am going to focus on the fact that some people carry out unethical investigations (in arts), experiments ( in the natural sciences) or processes ( in both), knowing that the people will not accept it. This is because they think that the unethical methods will lead them to an end that is of a greater good, or that will cause more good than bad. Therefore, the question is wether it is worth it to use unethical methods to achieve a goal that might or might not do a lot of good.

There are two clear points of view, the one from the people that think that the end justifies the means and the one from the people who decide to follow the socially established ethical rules. First I will give an example of an unethical way to obtain knowledge in the natural sciences and I will show two points of view, then I will give an example of ethical limits in the production of knowledge in the arts and I will give two points of view.

Animal testing is a good example of the problem of compromising ethics to achieve something good...

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...it the methods that we use to obtain knowledge in the natural sciences and arts but those judgements do not always stop the people from using unethical methods. As long as the person carrying out the experiment or the performance believes that what they are doing ir right or rational, they will not stop doing it willingly. It is better to keep a balance between emotion and reason when deciding about if something is ethical or not and about weather something is worth to be done. The problem with this is that most humans are selfish by nature and they will probaly always choose what is best for them, what is more reasonable to them, not even caring about wether it is ethical or not.

Works Cited

http://www.peta.org/action/

http://visualmaniac.com/visualmag/videos/yolanda-dominguez-art-activism-on-9-vide

http://condignart.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/vic.jpg

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