**: China Science Daily.
Wen Li Xia (Professor, Institute of History of Science and Science Culture, Shanghai Jiao Tong University).
Since March 2022, when the General Office of the Communist Party of China issued the "Opinions on Strengthening the Governance of Science and Technology Ethics", research on science and technology ethics has developed rapidly, and related articles and academic conferences have shown a prosperous scene. One of the fundamental questions that we need to consider is whether science and technology ethics is the bottom line or the "ceiling" in the pursuit of science and technology for good
Objectively speaking, the binding power of science and technology ethics on the negative effects of science and technology is limited. In other words, ethics in science and technology is not the only panacea to ensure that science and technology are always good, after all, ethics is not mandatory.
The author has written that the ultimate goal of ethical governance of science and technology is to minimize the risks of science and technology, rather than eliminate them. Therefore, there must be limits to strengthening the ethics of science and technology, otherwise it will backfire. Indefinite reduction of potential risks may seem beautiful, but it is likely to lead to rapid growth in governance costs and even extreme uneconomics, hindering the normal development of science and technology. Just as it is easier to score 80 points in an exam, but it is very difficult to score 95 or even 100 points, blindly pursuing high scores will stifle students' interest in learning Xi. Based on this common sense, what kind of action concept should we take in the specific governance process of science and technology ethics?
There is a very famous proposition in ethics - defending the bottom line of ethics, that is, the whole society should strive to defend some basic rules and norms to prevent human behavior from slipping to a certain unacceptable level, so as to maintain the minimum morality, order and civilization. The primary task of ethics education is not to raise moral standards, but to defend the moral bottom line from being broken down by various forces, to avoid large-scale social anomie, and to make the behavior of the whole society predictable.
The field of science and technology is the most active field of social activities today, and new things and new phenomena are emerging one after another, and human beings have no ready-made experience in dealing with these new things or new phenomena, and the uncertain consequences contained in them cannot be fully manifested in a short period of time.
In this regard, on the basis of not accumulating more experience, mankind can only learn from the lessons of history and set up some basic rules and norms to offset the possible adverse consequences of science and technology, and these basic new rules and norms are the bottom line of science and technology ethics to be defended by the scientific and technological community.
Ethical principles or norms define the boundaries of human action, so people take it for granted that in order for science and technology to better serve mankind and truly achieve the purpose of science and technology for good, the higher the ethical standard, the better, and even the ceiling of the standard can be regarded as the highest goal. Pursuing an ethical ceiling sounds great, but it's not realistic.
First of all, what kind of ethical standards can be called ceiling-level standards?Is it Kant's categorical imperative?Secondly, many cutting-edge technologies are completely exploring unknown areas, and their consequences are simply unpredictable, and the way new fields unfold is often obscured, and there is no ready-made experience to learn from, such as brain-computer connection, ChatGPT, etc., many problems caused by brain-computer interface, chatgpt, etc. are things we have never encountered, even if we want to set ceiling-level ethical standards, it is difficult to do.
From the perspective of human history, the highest ethical standards are necessarily the most effective?So far, there have been few success stories. The paradox of history lies precisely in the fact that ethical standards that seem to be the bottom line have played the greatest role, such as the "Ten Commandments of Moses" in the West and the Confucian "Do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and have become the actual guide for group behavior. Conversely, the more advanced and abstract the specification, the less useful it is in practice.
The setting of ethical standards will also be affected by many non-academic factors. From a purely speculative point of view, it is obvious that excessively high ethical standards will curb the development of new technologies, coupled with the complex international situation today, the unilateral pursuit of an ethical ceiling is likely to hinder the process of scientific and technological development in a country, can we afford this price?
Therefore, it is a realistic choice to adopt a combination of bottom-line ethics and brutal growth at the initial stage of something new. If the ultimate goal of science and technology ethics is to minimize residual risks, then we should pursue an ethical bottom line rather than an ethical ceiling. This is closer to the reality of scientific and technological development, and it can win the support of the majority of the people.
The merit of bottom-line ethics is that it prohibits scientists from having evil motives with clear rules or norms, and gives them more freedom. Importantly, bottom-line intervention has the least impact on scientific and technological activities, which is conducive to the construction of a scientific research ecological environment.
The public may be concerned about whether advocating for ethical science and technology risks the development of science and technology out of control, thereby threatening the long-term well-being of mankind
The author believes that there are two misunderstandings here: first, the ethical bottom line is not a very low standard, nor is it eternal, it will gradually move up with the improvement of the cognitive level of the whole society, that is, it will move closer to the ethical ceiling, which is the embodiment of the gradual progress of human civilization. As technology activities unfold and experience increases, ethical principles or norms evolve and become more and more precise to truly contribute to technology for good. On the contrary, blindly pursuing the ethical ceiling in the absence of a foundation not only goes against reality, but also leads to an embarrassing situation where the desire to hurry is not reached.
Second, there is indeed a gray space between the ethical bottom line and the legal bottom line, which will lead to unexpected problems in some scientific and technological achievements, but once these problems touch the legal bottom line, they will also be subject to the hard constraints of the law, and this risk is the price that human beings must pay for scientific and technological progress. After all, ethics is only a hard constraint that minimizes residual risk rather than zeroing it out.
Returning to real life, we must make it clear that the goal of ethical governance of science and technology should be positioned to defend the bottom line of ethics rather than pursue the ceiling. The research in the ascendant academic circles and the heated discussion among the public are precisely the strong support for maintaining and improving the bottom line of science and technology ethics.