Kitcher on the Ethics of Inquiry

The thesis that scientific inquiry must operate within moral constraints is familiar and unobjectionable in cases involving immoral treatment of experimental subjects, as in the infamous Tuskegee experiments. However, in Science, Truth, and Democracy and related work, Philip Kitcher envisions a more controversial set of constraints. Specifically, he argues that inquiry ought not to be pursued in cases where the consequences of its pursuit are likely to affect negatively the lives of individuals who comprise a socially underprivileged group. This constraint is controversial because it imposes moral obligations upon scientific inquirers that they do not have as moral agents generally. That is, whereas the familiar prohibitions against the violation of the rights of experimental subjects amount to the enforcement of fundamental moral obligations in the laboratory and the denial that such obligations can be overridden for the sake of scientific discovery, Kitcher argues that scientists incur in virtue of their role as scientists a set of distinctive moral obligations with regard to individuals belonging to underprivileged groups. In this way, Kitcher is proposing an autonomous ethics of inquiry rather than arguing for the extension of familiar moral obligations to scientific inquiry. Much of Kitcher’s argument is directed squarely at sociobiological and psychometric research concerning the native abilities of the sexes and races. Kitcher’s “ambitious” conclusion against such inquiry is that “were we to recognize certain kinds of truths, the impact on some people would be to erode their sense of worth and make it difficult, even impossible, to frame a conception of their lives as valuable.” That is to say, the truth about some things will set no one free, and in such cases “free inquiry may be too dangerous to be tolerated.” His weaker conclusion is that given the political frame of these issues, we have no reason to embrace the Millian optimism that the truth will out. In fact, he claims, there is reason to believe such research, regardless of its conclusions, will most likely further entrench the standing prejudices. The question of what kinds of moral considerations, if any, should constrain scientific practice is so difficult and complex that it cannot be properly addressed in a single essay. Accordingly, our objective in the present essay is modest: we shall argue that Kitcher’s proposal is inadequate. Given that the issue of moral constraints on inquiry is especially pressing under contemporary social and political conditions, we hope that our critique of Kitcher will encourage further work