Evidence in Science and Religion

What constitues evidence? Is scientific evidence different from say, religious evidence? How? Stanley Fish has some thoughts:

The very act of looking around is always and already performed within a set of fully elaborate assumptions complete with categories, definitions and rules that tell you in advance what kinds of things might be “discovered” and what relationships of cause and effect, contiguity, sameness and difference, etc., might obtain between them. In Hebrews 11:1, St. Paul speaks of the “evidence of things not seen.” In the up-to-date accounts of scientific inquiry, the corollary would be “the evidence of things not directly seen,” but things that can be brought to (indirect and provisional) visibility by the assumption and application of powerful theories and the procedures they call into being.

Read the article here.

The Ethics of Data

Ethical concerns over the explosion of data in cyberspace have primarily focused on privacy, identity and the potential for misuse. The World Economic Forum has outlined a broad program that refocuses the mining of data in ways that help people:

Utilising the data created by mobile phone use can improve our understanding of vulnerable populations, and can quicken governments‟ response to the emergence of new trends. Actors in the public, private, and development sectors are beginning to recognise the mutual benefits of creating and maintaining a "data commons" in which this information benefits society as a whole while protecting individual security and privacy. But a more concerted effort is required to make this vision a reality.

Read the briefing here.

Ethical Rules for Robots

In September of 2011, the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council hosted a conference of experts drawn from the fields of technology, industry, the arts, law and social sciences, to develop rules for robots in society. The result, five ethical rules for robots:

1. Robots are multi-use tools. Robots should not be designed solely or primarily to kill or harm humans, except in the interests of national security.

2. Humans, not robots, are responsible agents. Robots should be designed & operated as far as is practicable to comply with existing laws & fundamental rights & freedoms, including privacy.

3. Robots are products. They should be designed using processes which assure their safety and security.

4. Robots are manufactured artefacts. They should not be designed in a deceptive way to exploit vulnerable users; instead their machine nature should be transparent.

5. The person with legal responsibility for a robot should be attributed.

Read an expanded version of the principles here.

How far Should Science Take Us...?

NYT's Armchair Ethicist posed the following:

Recently, scientists at two laboratories tweaked a dangerous bird-flu virus in order to make it more contagious. Was it ethical to even undertake such an experiment? Does the importance of preparing for a pandemic justify publishing the experiment’s results? Should the importance of preventing bioterrorism justify governments’ suppressing the information? Is some information simply too dangerous to share — or even to ascertain?

Read the responses here.

Cyber Attack as Just Cause

In a recent Pentagon report, the United States declares it reserves the right to retaliate with military force against a cyber attack and is working to sharpen its ability to track down the source of any breach.

Read the report here.

The Clergy Letter Project

Michael Zimmerman, Professor of Biology at Butler University, developed the Clergy Letter project to battle the misperception that science and religion are inevitably in conflict. Focusing specifically on the theory of evolution, Zimmerman maintains "numerous clergy from most denominations have tremendous respect for evolutionary theory and have embraced it as a core component of human knowledge, fully harmonious with religious faith." The Project aims to promote the view that "religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey scientific information but to transform hearts." In the end, "the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist."

Additional resources from the Clergy Letter Project are available here.

Being a Responsible Chemist

The 2007 national meeting of the American Chemical Society included a symposium on the ethics, policy and politics surrounding the chemist's profession. Topics included defining what it means to be an ethical chemist, teaching ethics, dealing with conflicts of interest, conducting responsible research and issues involving federal funding.

Presentations from the symposium are available on the ACS website here.

"A Little Philosophy Is A Dangerous Thing"

“Philosophy,” according to Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, in their new book The Grand Design, “is dead.” It has “not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics, [and] scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.”

A philosopher (living, as far as we can tell) responds here.

Gender Ethics

Those in support of the prohibition against women participating in direct combat often appeal to the fundamental (biological, physiological) differences between men and women. These differences, in turn, provide the bedrock for assumptions about the differences between gender (a social construct) that lead to policy.

One author questions some recently employed science that purports to mark out the biological differences:

No one disputes that the sexes differ physiologically, in hormones and anatomy, or that there are sex differences in the brain related to men’s and women’s different reproductive processes. The eternal question is, and has been, so what?

Here's an interesting point with regards to women in combat:

Over and over, if you watch what people do rather than what they say they would do, and vary the situations in which they do it, gender differences fade to the vanishing point. As Fine puts it, “Pick a gender difference, any difference. Now watch very closely as – poof! – it’s gone”.

Since broadswords and hand-to-hand combat are on the decline in favor of stand-off, button-operated lethality, do the physical differences between men and women matter anymore?

Plato didn't think so.

Read the Times of London review here.

Science & Religion on Morality

Just in time for our section on religion and ethics, the NYT has published a review on Sam Harris' new book, How Science Can Determine Human Values. The review takes issue with Harris' position, that science can uncover the source of human morality, but along the way it provides a fair mapping of what's at stake in the larger debate, as well as tying in strands from realism, relativism, and utilitarian theory.