Knowledge is basically the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. It consists of facts and skills acquired by a person through experience or education. Ethical considerations are relative to one’s own knowledge, experience, and value system. According to Hunt and Vitell (1986), ethical judgment is the process of considering several alternatives and choosing the most ethical alternative. For Rest (1986), ethical judgment is the process by which an individual determines that one alternative is morally right and another alternative is morally wrong. “Broadly, ethical judgement can be defined so as to include the decision process as well as the action itself.” This essay aims to discuss the way in which ethical judgements limit the methods available in the production of knowledge in both the arts and natural sciences.
Scientific research is used in the production of knowledge. In some cases, ethical judgements limit this method of knowledge production. For example and due to limited prevalence of a certain disease, and the high cost of research, experimentation is rather limited; therefore leading to poor health care for those patients suffering from this disease. Patients who suffer from a complicated ophthalmic disease characterized by the absence of their eye pupils are not being taken into consideration as their number is rather small, and there is limited scientific research to improve their eyesight.
Animal testing raises a very large debate in the field of science and ethics. Making animals suffer for the benefit of man is definitely immoral; however, many believe that it is needed for making scientific advances.
It is true that the human race would not be where it is today without the findings that scientists ...
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...owledge produced based on experimentation, which is based on deductive and inductive reasoning, and not affected by ethical judgments.
Debates on issues such as scientific research on certain ailments and animal testing in the science, to photos about vulnerable refugee populations and war documentaries in the arts, have been ongoing. For both, ethical judgments have hindered the production in the art and natural sciences. Nonetheless; there definitely needs to be an equal medium as the world will continue to change and progress, and humans need to learn to go with this flow, but remember to know what the limits are, when to stop, or when to push past them and thrive.
Works Cited
http://arianaaltman.wordpress.com/2014/02/18/tok-essay-revised/
http://heapol.oxfordjournals.org/content/11/2/179.full.pdf?origin=publication_detail
Ethics is an important proponent when considering any decision. Knowing the difference between right and wrong is something everyone should know. However, the importance of ethics gets minimized when a decision that seems wrong actually has benefits. In the efforts of improving society, often ethics is violated. Sometimes in order for society to be better off as a whole, there has to be little sacrificing of ethical practices along the way to do so.
The morals of a modern society entails protections for all species of life. Humans do not have the nature to not inflict harm on innocent animals around the world.Animal research is unjust and neglectful to species in every animal kingdom.The animal kingdom has been disturbed since men step foot on this earth. Some people are so selfish that the only thing that look over is about their own selves and not other humans or living things in this world. Animal rights is a big thing to some people and to others it not this paper talks about how it's cruel to research on animals, how research doesn't improve health,and how it's not regulated.
The practice of using animals for testing has been a controversial issue over the past thirty years. Animal testing is a morally debated practice. The question is whether animal testing is morally right or wrong. This paper will present both sides of this issue as well as my own opinion.
Who appoints ethical limits that prevail in our society? Is every individual responsible for their own actions even though their morals may be different from others? Ethical judgments are made for every individual separately and some of them are based on their own emotions or their own reason. There are many factors that influence ethical judgments in a society or culture. In my essay I will use reason and emotion as ways of knowing, because I believe that in order to make an ethical judgment in both the natural sciences and arts a person’s emotion and reason play a role. Discovering new knowledge in natural sciences is mostly done with controlled experiments, while artists can express their knowledge in a different way with pictures, sculptures, movies… In both areas of knowledge ethics cannot be excluded. Art has more freedom to express without getting negative feedback from spectators or society, while a natural scientist must be aware of lots of ethical limits in order that their experiment would be ethically acceptable. My claim is that ethical judgments do limit the methods available in the production of knowledge in arts and natural sciences, but the limitations are stricter when it comes to conducting experiments than creating art works. Ideally an objective view should be considered when evaluating this claim but our emotions can be stumbling blocks to ethical judgments.
“It is a simple fact that many, if not most, of today’s modern medical miracles would not exist if experimental animals had not been available to medical scientists. It is equally a fact that, should we as a society decide the use of animal subjects is ethically unacceptable and therefore must be stopped, medical progress will slow to a snail’s pace. Such retardation will in itself have a huge ethical ‘price tag’ in terms of continued human and animal suffering from problems such as diabetes, cancer, degenerative cardiovascular diseases, and so forth.”
In the natural sciences there are always ethical norms that limit how knowledge can be produced. In the natural sciences, experimentation is an important method of producing knowledge but ethical judgments can limit the use of this method. There are areas that are considered unethical ...
Ethical judgment is not a definite restriction for the method and production of knowledge in the art field, but it does relatively limit the production of knowledge in the natural science fields. Since the ethical judgment is an authority in a majority of people’s notions and minds, people tend to follow ethical standards and it is harder to develop the knowledge further. In addition, reason is one of the ways of knowing, and moral principle is a crucial factor that shapes the pursuit of knowledge. The extreme cases in the natural science and in distinctive areas of knowledge violate the reason that undermines the moral obligation. There are numerous examples that demonstrate that extreme cases in science, such as scientific experimentation involving human mortally killed, are controversial for the public and entire society.
As an idea, ethics means as a complex arrangement of qualities, measures and institutional plans that help constitute and direct scientific action. Eventually, research ethics is a codification of morals of science practically speaking. As such, it is taking into account general morals of science, generally as general morals is in view of conventional ethical quality (Nesh,
Ever since the scientific revolution, there have been countless breakthroughs in the scientific field. From the invention of the light bulb to the computers we stare at daily, it is axiomatic that such things can only happen due to the advancement in science. However, a myriad of scientific researches today have received strong opposition due to the ethical concerns regarding the research. This essay will agree that ethics hinder scientific research because society has a system of shared values and norms which constitutes people’s ethical personality and differentiates what is ethical and can be tolerated.
Ethical judgements limit the methods available in the production of knowledge in both, the arts and the natural sciences.
middle of paper ... ... Although subject to change in different cultures, the societal norm of placing an ethical code helps us to set the “right” amount of boundaries in areas of knowledge, including the arts and the natural sciences. Like I said before, there are many complications to this as both scientists and artists are put in situations where they must face the fine line between having a scientific/artistic role or ethical role in creating opportunities for knowledge. Works Cited McKie, Robin.
Interpreted literally, ethical judgements do seem to limit methods available in the production of knowledge in both the arts and the natural sciences; it’s not difficult to imagine the chaos of a world void of any kind of ethical considerations. However, can knowledge in the natural sciences even be compared to knowledge in the arts? Knowledge in the natural sciences includes knowledge that helps improve methods used in hospitals to treat previously untreatable illnesses. Art at first glance does not hold enough weight to be compared because it reaches a smaller number of people giving it less importance than knowledge gained in natural sciences. Nevertheless, art might not reach many people at one time, but it does spread ideas and judgements that go beyond the unanswered questions, hypothesis, and speculations of the natural sciences.
...it the knowledge that we may gain through the arts. The same can be said involving the natural sciences; even though these sciences tend to be more objective, the subjective nature of ethics can cloud judgement and could prevent progress in that field. For example, if a certain experiment is regarded as unethical and is therefore discontinued, one could say that the chances of making a scientific discovery is also discontinued. On the other hand, if the scientists were allowed to go forward with the experiment and no great conclusions or progress was made, then it could been seen as a waste of time and displeasing. Either way, we can never be completely sure on which side is the “better” side because it is based purely on ethical opinion. Therefore, ethical judgements can limit the methods in the production of knowledge in the both the natural sciences and the arts.
One might begin to think, what conclusions can be drawn from the above discussion? From my perspective, I feel as though there is enough evidence to support the above assertions despite the counter claims. I have drawn from both real life situations and personal experiences and in the process understood the influence of ethical judgment in both areas of knowledge. Ethical judgment, therefore serves to ensure that we as individuals make moral choices in our everyday life, but in doing so can limit the methods available for the production of knowledge.
Philosopher David Hume divided the term “ethics” into three distinctive areas; meta-ethics, which focuses on the language used when talking about ethical issues. The general approach to this area of ethics is, it explores the nature of moral judgement, and it looks at the meaning of ethical principles. Normative ethics tries to find practical moral code that we can live by. It is concerned with the content of moral judgements and the criteria for what is right and wrong. Finally applied-ethics is the application of ethical theories and using them in real life issues such as medical research or human rights (Hume D, 2011).