When judgments pass onto one person or action, they are for most part, and most of the time, fairly negative. We may be judged for the way we walk, our speech, or as well how some may place a legend underneath a graph in excel rather than the standard right. People judge one another because the accepted conventions of one person differentiate from the other and what this does is interfere with what was being judged on. This is primarily due to the area of knowledge, emotion. We are bound to feel slightly insulted, embarrassed or uncomfortable from what was said, making us naturally retreat with that action or habit. In the arts and sciences there are more than a handful of judgments that have surpassed when it came to the acts in which people in those areas committed. But where do these accepted conventions originate? The key word that springs here is ethics. It is near to impossible to define and state what is accepted and what is not, but what can be explained is from where these ‘guidelines to normalcy’ might come from. People each own have their opinion on what they believe to be acceptable and unacceptable. Taking the natural sciences into the limelight, we can easily come up with plenty of examples and claims that may seem rather overused, such as animal experimentation – is it right? But how about we take an example that does not conform to the animal kingdom, but more so with humans to provide a little higher shock factor? The Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971 took place in Stanford University, and the main goal formulated by the researcher was to see whether ordinary and social people from a decent background, change into the opposite when put into a place of power where they can be seen almost as ‘evil’. The experim... ... middle of paper ... ...epted conventions, and with this we started creating more regulations and laws to follow to avoid unethical practice. Dissections and autopsies are extremely limited now, especially if needed for a form of art. The three fundamental Ways of Knowing: Emotion, Religion, and Faith, are the backbones of where one’s accepted conventions would originate. These influence the ethical judgments that people create and gravitate them equally to both the Natural Sciences and the Arts. Their reasoning for the Natural Sciences usually surpasses more so than in the Arts, due to there trust in the facts and usefulness of any knowledge achieved. Whereas the Arts suffer more bias and discussion as art is more subjective and is based off of each owns opinion as to what can be considered as art. Ethics do technically limit the production of knowledge, even more so today than before.
The types of experiments performed at the University of Buffalo and the University of California depicts just some of the few horrors of animal testing. According to the article, during these experimentations the eyes of monkeys were implanted with metal coils into their eye sockets in order to study movement ("Update: Animal Testing"). Often times animals are tested upon in laboratories, living in cold isolated environments. The moral aspect of the debate, is whether or not animals should be utilized and later euthanized for the purpose of human benefit, especially when only one party decides. As a resu...
In the field of psychology one of the main goals is studying and determining the behavior of individuals. It is imperative to study human’s behavior under controlled environmental settings, and how these individuals react to the stimuli around them. But it is also important to note how far is too far in the environmental settings, and is it possible for the subjects that are in the experiment able to change their own personal beliefs and conform to the people/ environment around them knowingly. There are few well-known experiments that demonstrate these changes in the personal behavior of the subjects. These being; the Stanley Milgram’s “shock experiment”, and Philip Zimbardo’s “ Stanford Prison experiment ”. These two controversial experiments
Another benefit to society was also the impression this experiment left on the prison system in America at the time, and some aspects of this were changed as a result. Therefore in conclusion, in these two experiments alone, the unethical methods used can be justified as they have helped to profit humanity by providing insight into how humans behave when put into certain social situations. Without these ethical guidelines being broken, both experiments would have lacked ecological validity and the results would not be legitimate.
...certain scientists. During this time, many medical students began to rob graves in order to obtain bodies to perform dissections on. This then led to the development of the Anatomy Act of 1832 in order to supply a sufficient amount of dead bodies to perform dissections on. The nineteenth century also experienced an expanding amount of knowledge on developmental anatomy due to the many experiments and research being done to study it. In addition, England became the main focal point for medical and anatomical research. As the years continued to pass, more advancements are being made in the field and study of anatomy based on continuing research from scientists, researchers, and doctors. With new technology, more information and a better understanding can be gained about the structure and function of organs, organ systems, and DNA among other various parts of the body.
Walker, Charles A. "Lest We Forget: The Tuskegee Experiment." The Journal of Theory Construction & Testing 13.1 (2009): 5-6. Academic Search Complete. Web. 11 Nov. 2011.
Our perception of moral judgments sometimes affects the ways in which knowledge is produced. In these two areas of knowledge, the natural sciences and the arts, the ways of knowing are different as is the nature of the knowledge produced. Likewise, ethical judgments may or may not limit knowledge in these areas but in different ways. Ethical judgments may lead to questioning the means by which some scientific knowledge is produced. Significant, meaningful works of art are produced only when the artist is able to transmit an emotion to the spectator, reader or listener effectively. This is why powerful emotional reactions to a work of art sometimes produce strong and often opposing ethical judgements which can limit the artist’s opportunities to produce knowledge.
"Suppose you had only kids who were normally healthy, psychologically and physically, and they knew they would be going into a prison-like environment and that some of their civil rights would be sacrificed. Would those good people, put in that bad, evil place—would their goodness triumph?" questioned Phillip Zimbardo (1). In 1971, Zimbardo transformed part of the basement of the psychology building at Stanford University to answer that very question. This became known as the Zimbardo Experiment. The Zimbardo Experiment shows the behavioral changes people undergo while faced with the cruel reality of being imprisoned or enforcing rules.
As early as the 19th century, human experiments have been performed in the U.S, which later were characterized as being unethical. Most of the experiments were performed illegally, and without the consent of the subjects being tested. The Majority of the tests being performed were on children and the mentally ill. A large number of those subjects were poor, minorities, and prisoners in many of the studies.
Lessons can be learned through experiments but at what cost? Steven Pinker, a experimental psychologist, once said, “If you give people literacy, bad ideas can be attacked and experiments tried, and lessons will accumulate.” This quote by Pinker gives a great idea what could happen when people get literate and conduct experiments that they will do to learn more. The Nazi’s wanted to learn more about the human body. During the Holocaust, the experiments that they performed were the most wicked and dehumanising crimes in history.
The dark history of human experimentation began with the clarification between experimentation and treatment. The larger public began to notice experimenters ethical neglect for their subjects in the early 1960s. Those charged with administering research funding took note of the public furor generated by the exposure of gross abuses in medical research. These included uncontrolled promotional distribution of thalidomide throughout the United States, labeled as an experimental drug; the administration of cancer cells to senile and debilitated patients at the Brooklyn Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital; and the uncontrolled distribution of LSD to children at Harvard Medical Center through Professors Alpert and Leary. Most important was Henry Beechers 1966 article in the New England Journal of Medicine, detaili...
Production of knowledge is generally seen in a positive light. However, when ethics and morality become involved in the process of production, judgements will undoubtedly be made that may seem to limit the availability of that knowledge. Ethical judgements are made by the combination of a knower, his or her standard of value, and the situation itself. In the field of the arts and natural sciences, ethics plays a crucial role in the extent one may possibly be allowed to go to when discovering new knowledge. Reason and emotion are important ways of knowing that help guide knowers in making certain moral decisions. Both ways of knowing can be associated with teleological or deontological arguments; the ethics are based on either an objectives-focused or obligations-focused mindset. In this essay, I will be discussing the limitations set on both the arts and the natural sciences as areas of knowledge. To what extent do ethical implications hinder the way art can be produced or the methods involved in expanding society’s knowledge of science?
Unethical experiments have occurred long before people considered it was wrong. The protagonist of the practice of human experimentation justify their views on the basis that such experiments yield results for the good of society that are unprocurable by other methods or means of study ( Vollmann 1448 ).The reasons for the experiments were to understand, prevent, and treat disease, and often there is not a substitute for a human subject. This is true for study of illnesses such as depression, delusional states that manifest themselves partly by altering human subjectivity, and impairing cognitive functioning. Concluding, some experiments have the tendency to destroy the lives of the humans that have been experimented on.
Ethics is the study of moral values and the principles we use to evaluate actions. Ethical concerns can sometimes stand as a barrier to the development of the arts and the natural sciences. They hinder the process of scientific research and the production of art, preventing us from arriving at knowledge. This raises the knowledge issues of: To what extent do moral values confine the production of knowledge in the arts, and to what extent are the ways of achieving scientific development limited due to ethical concerns? The two main ways of knowing used to produce ethical judgements are reason, the power of the mind to form judgements logically , and emotion, our instinctive feelings . I will explore their applications in various ethical controversies in science and arts as well as the implications of morals in these two areas of knowledge.
Art and science (to be more specific, natural science) are essential parts of our society and areas of knowledge, as are ethics. One must wonder what impact our ethical judgements, our decisions based on moral principles, have on these two. Our morals are the laws and standards that we make and believe in. Ethical judgements often limit the production of knowledge from the natural science as well as from art; however, art can be born out of ethical judgements. Ethics are often deeply involved in anything we do and in much of our knowledge. We ask ourselves if something is ethical or not based on one system of morality of another. Individuals who are proficient in the natural sciences often confront ethical roadblocks that seem to hinder human innovative progress. The same has been and continues to be seen in the arts. Artists are often tempted not to follow through or even begin with projects that they believe to be immoral according to their own beliefs or the beliefs of others. Such art is often censored if it ever is produced; however, it is our morals that allow us to create art and separate it from the rest of the world. Our ethical judgements limit and create much of the art that is (or could have been) around us today.
To the great extend ethical judgements limit the methods available in the production of knowledge in both the arts and the natural sciences. But in my opinion such a limitations are essential, while people need to be to some extend controlled. The boundaries are needed because giving to people to much freedom and power is very dangerous. The only one problem in case of ethical judgements is that the perception about something wrong or right differs among the people. I think that this comes from the inside, generally there are some “informal laws” how to behave, what is good and bad, but this is a personal matter of every single person which ones from that “laws” he or she accept and reject. The morality is determined by culture and experiences and differs among people. If there would not be something like moral code the production of knowledge in art the same as in natural science would not have any limitations. Using examples from art and biology I will try to show how ethical judgements limit the methods available in the production of knowledge in both the arts and the natural sciences, but also I will try to explain my statement that such a limitations are necessary.