knowledge implies responsibility essay

Knowledge Carries an Ethical Responsibility Essay

Introduction Knowledge refers to the acquisition of skills, information, consent and awareness of given happenings in the society. It entails apprehending truth, facts, being learned and familiarisation of oneself with situations through a process of logical reasoning and assessment of circumstances.

Whether or not a single perfect process of acquisition of knowledge can be determined is a debatable issue as it remains a mystery as to how exactly people possess knowledge (Raffoul 27-34). According to Raffoul (165-167) and Rest (5-14), acquisition of knowledge involves easily and effectively embracing reality through experience or in thought as it is based on the proven scientific evidence, acquaintance, perception and experience.

Different fields of knowledge such as mathematics, science, geography, science, psychology, religion and engineering do exist. Value judgment among people depends on the knowledge they possess. On the other hand, like morality, ethical responsibility demands that a person fulfils certain obligations in the best possible way and for the common good of all concerned (Lucas 36-45).

At times, ethical dilemma can compel an individual to choose from a number of ethical principles that adhere to the moral law of doing right. Possession of knowledge and ethical responsibility Whether voluntary or unintentional, existence of praise and blame are major aspects of ethical responsibility for people with a certain level of knowledge.

As dictated by normative ethics, application of conduct and acquired knowledge demands that existence of information and its application to decision making and other human practices be effectively employed in making rational decisions. Majority of people use applied ethics and the common societal laws and principles which guide people’s lives to judge human behaviour (Lucas 41-78). Ethics and morality entail doing what is right and avoiding evil.

Knowledge of ethics and morality should be focused on enhancing maturity, benevolence, prudence and rational reasoning in undertaking critical decisions. In view of the fact that acquisition of knowledge has “nothing” to do with being certain of the prevailing or possible circumstances, moral law dictates that all human acts should be perceived in an objective, realistic, rational, and focused manner with the interest of the majority at heart (Rest 78-112).

Withholding knowledge and refusing to act is definitely not a moral act and as it contradicts the concept of undertaking ethical responsibility based on one’s acquired knowledge. For instance, scientists who have the expertise to develop nuclear bombs should often be aware of the possible dangers that could emanate from such “wonderful” initiatives (Lucas 16-21).

Arguments that are in line with social and moral relativism are likely to compel people with certain knowledge not to act in a morally upright manner. Unlike in a utilitarian ethical perspective in which the needs and good deeds of an individual are superseded by those of the majority, possession of knowledge dictates that one avoids joining the majority and remain focused on doing what is reasonable and right. According to Lucas (33-42), being in custody of knowledge demands that one acts in an ethical manner.

This fact is no longer an issue of concern to most people in the contemporary society. What individuals do with the knowledge they possess is fully dependent on their decisions and will to do exactly that. Ways of acquisition of knowledge are many and varied. Whether or not a person’s knowledge of something should make him or her answerable to certain acts is a very contentious issue. It leads to constant confrontation and demands by people to desist from taking responsibility of the different situations they face.

It can be argued that awareness, familiarity and apprehension of knowledge carry ethical significances. Human intellect should be employed in analyzing situations and critically assessing the degree to which given acts are ethically correct.

History and natural science are vital means of acquisition of knowledge. The two methods enable an individual to learn and accept certain truths that can never be concealed through false and unfounded logic (Lucas 28-46). However, it is vital to ensure that any form of reasoning is neither biased nor is it fully based on mere perception of real life situations or emotions.

Portrayal of false image or biasness is equal to being selfish, self centred, uncouth and deceptive to the common moral law. For instance, doctors who possess actual knowledge and intelligent reasoning of patients’ diseases have the ethical responsibility of ensuring that patients are given the most appropriate diagnoses and that all their medical concerns are addressed in an amicable and informative way (Lucas 79-85).

Another indicator of the fact that being knowledgeable requires that one becomes ethically responsible could be demonstrated by a case where an individual witnesses a crime being committed. A crime witness can use his or her knowledge acquisition gained through perception, language and sight in determining what actions to take which may include reporting or ignoring the situation.

Like a doctor, driver or a teaching professional, professional ethos, ethics, code of conduct and acquired knowledge demand that one fulfils an ethical act (Rest 147). To what degree would one say that indeed knowledge has an ethical responsibility? Pretence is a likely phenomenon that could dominate people’s lives once they learn that their acknowledgement of possessing knowledge could imply being fully answerable to both negative and positive occurrences that relate to the situation.

According to Lucas (138-149), the act of acknowledging the existence of something should never make a person to be ethically responsible. Rest (5-11) argues that people should only be ethically responsible to acts which they have the will, desire and duty of doing. Undertaking an act with the aim of preventing greater harm is crucial.

Albert Einstein’s unparalleled knowledge of nuclear physics led to the invention of a nuclear bomb. Einsten’s invention was good because it involved the use of his possessed knowledge. It was not in Albert’s ability to control the degree to which the nuclear bombs would be developed. The invention of nuclear physics by Einstein culminated into massive physical destruction and loss of lives such as the case of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan (Rest 6-11).

Regardless of the kind of knowledge that one possesses and the process that one undergoes in possessing the knowledge, modern ethical points of view dictate that human beings have a perceived obligation of attempting to create the most possible benefit that would in turn satisfy most people with the least possible harm. A picture of man and lady holding hands could lead to the perception that they could be couples. However, that does not make one ethically responsible for the acts committed by such people.

In fact, such a witness would not be contradicting any moral laws by not involving himself or herself in the daily endeavours of the couple. This fact shows that acquisition of knowledge does not always compel one to be ethically responsible in all situations (Raffoul 59-64). It is highly likely that knowleageable people could falter in their decision making process.

Certain situations could pose a dilemma. A situation of a dilemma should never be treated as a justification for committing evil. The knowledge that a biologist and a nuclear researcher possess and the manner in which such knowledge could be utilized should never be measured or judged on equal standards but rather be analyzed based on the result of the act, the surrounding circumstances and the intention of undertaking the specific act. A biologist or a nuclear researcher should be highly disciplined.

The said professionals should never share critical secrets that pertain to how one can use certain substances for destructive purposes like uranium. Conclusion It is evident from the above analysis that knowledge has an ethical responsibility especially with regard to the manner in which professionals and people that interact with a group of other people carry out their duties and responsibilities. This fact is evident in situations where the responsibility in question is likely to cause harm or offer misleading information to people.

Though possessing knowledge would often have little or no effect on people, it is evident that acts and decisions made by people with such knowledge are the ones that need to be undertaken in a conscientious, ethical and reasonable manner. While people have the right to acquire and fully possess knowledge, it is imperative to ensure that the knowledge acquired is utilized in an ethical manner.

Works Cited

Lucas, Peter. Ethics and Self-Knowledge: Respect for Self-Interpreting Agents , Preston, UK: Springer, 2011.Print.

Raffoul, François. The Origins of Responsibility , Indiana, USA: Indiana University Press, 2010.Print.

Rest, James. Moral Development in the Professions: Psychology and Applied Ethics, Moral Reasoning in Medicines , New Jersey, USA: Tailor & Francis e-Library, 2009.Print.

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Knowledge, Truth, and Duty: Essays on Epistemic Justification, Responsibility, and Virtue

Steup, Matthias (ed.), Knowledge, Truth, and Duty: Essays on Epistemic Justification, Responsibility, and Virtue , Oxford University Press, 2001, 272 pp, $49.95 (hbk), ISBN 0-195-12892-3.

Reviewed by Thomas D. Senor, The University of Arkansas

Knowledge, Truth, and Duty is a collection of fourteen essays by fourteen different authors. As the title indicates, the central topic is epistemic normativity and its relationship to the concepts of knowledge and justification, and to the twin goals of truth-seeking and error avoidance. The contributors are (in order of appearance): Susan Haack, Bruce Russell, Richard Fumerton, Carl Ginet, Richard Feldman, Robert Audi, Alvin Goldman, Matthias Steup, Marian David, Michael DePaul, Ernest Sosa, Noah Lemos, Vrinda Dalmiya, and Linda Zagzebski. With the exception of the papers of Haack, Goldman, and Sosa, these essays are making their print debut here. There is not space to adequately discuss each essay, so we will have to content ourselves with a quick description of each. After that I’ll take a closer look at one of the book’s central essays.

In her paper, “’The Ethics of Belief’ Reconsidered,” Susan Haack considers the relationship between epistemic and moral appraisal. After distinguishing five possible relationships between the two, Haack argues that the view that epistemic appraisal is but a subspecies of moral appraisal is false. For, Haack claims, if one’s evidence for p isn’t good enough, then one will be unjustified in believing that p. But a person “can’t be morally at fault in believing that p unless his belief is willfully induced” (p. 23). Yet that might not be the case; perhaps the person is intellectually deficient and cannot help but believe p even though his evidence does not support it—then his belief is epistemically unjustified but not morally permissible. Haack’s perspective on the relationship between epistemic and moral justification is captured in what she calls the “overlap thesis,” which says that there is a “partial overlap” and that “positive/negative epistemic appraisal is associated with positive/negative ethical appraisal” (p. 21). Her idea is that there are certain ways of being unjustified that bring along with them moral unjustifiedness. So a belief about, say, the current safety of my children that is formed on the basis of hasty generalization might well be both epistemically and morally unjustified. Believing in this way is a form of culpable ignorance.

Bruce Russell’s paper, “Epistemic and Moral Duty,” explores the same topic in a different way. Russell is concerned with the distinction between subjective and objective duty—moral and epistemic. Russell argues that knowledge requires the completion of both one’s objective and subjective epistemic duties. Borrowing from the work of Richard Feldman, Russell takes objective justification to require that the subject have good reason to believe the proposition in question; a subjectively justified belief is a belief that the person is blameless in holding. Russell uses this distinction to reply to examples of Alvin Plantinga’s in which a person has epistemically blameless true belief that is nevertheless not knowledge. These examples crucially involve a person’s holding a belief for which the subject lacks good reason. Russell takes these examples to show that objective justification is also necessary for knowledge. It is similar for beliefs for which the person allegedly has objective justification but lacks subjective justification.

Both Haack’s and Russell’s papers assume that epistemic appraisals are in some sense “normative.” But what is it for an appraisal to merit this appellation? This is the topic of Richard Fumerton’s paper, “Epistemic Justification and Normativity.” In the end, Fumerton can find no good sense of the term according to which epistemic judgments are normative. What’s the result of this? Fumerton claims that one potential implication is that epistemic internalists who criticize externalists for failing to fully appreciate epistemic normativity are off the mark (although Fumerton is sympathetic to other criticisms of internalists).

Part II of the book is entitled “Epistemic Deontology and Doxastic Voluntarism.” Carl Ginet’s fascinating paper, “Deciding to Believe,” kicks off this section. Ginet argues that while we lack direct control over a great many of our beliefs (i.e., that doxastic voluntarism is false regarding much of what we believe), there is a class of propositions that we can, in the right circumstances, come to believe “just by deciding to believe” them. The kind of case Ginet has in mind occurs when some doubt with respect to p comes up and one considers whether to believe that p, thinks that it would be better to believe p in these circumstances than to withhold p, and so decides to believe that p. To illustrate, Ginet offers the example of leaving home for vacation and then wondering whether the front door has been locked at the house. One might seem to remember doing it but not being completely sure. Nevertheless, given the hassle of driving the 50 miles back to one’s house, the good reason to think the door is locked, and the undesirability of worrying about it for the rest of the trip, one simply decides to believe the door is locked. Simultaneous with the decision is the forming of a disposition to “count on” p in deciding how to act in relevantly similar situations. Ginet recognizes that our having direct voluntary control in cases of this sort does little to motivate a general voluntarism of the sort that, for example, William Alston has argued against. Nevertheless, his article is noteworthy as a defense of even a rather restricted version of doxastic voluntarism.

No one has done more to defend the significance of epistemic deontologism against recent attacks than Richard Feldman. Here, in his paper, “Voluntary Belief and Epistemic Evaluation,” Feldman argues that a recent defense of doxastic voluntarism is flawed and that we lack the kind of control over our beliefs that we have over our actions, control that arguably is necessary for our actions to admit of deontological evaluation. However, Feldman argues that, as in the financial and legal domains, the “ought” of epistemology does not entail “can.” Just was we ought to repay our debt even if we are broke when the payment is due, so we ought to believe according to our evidence.

In “Doxastic Voluntarism and the Ethics of belief,” Robert Audi considers and then rejects arguments for two versions of doxastic voluntarism. Audi then considers the place for the ethics of belief in light of the failure of voluntarism. It turns out that there is a place for such an ethic but that the beliefs themselves are not the targets.

Alvin Goldman’s reprinted essay, “Internalism Exposed,” is the first paper of Part III, “Epistemic Deontology and the Internality of Justification.” Goldman is here interested in the motivation of internalism. The first rationale for internalism Goldman considers comes from what he calls the “guidance deontology” conception of justification. This is a long and rich essay that resists quick summarization. The bottom line is that Goldman finds internalism problematic because any way of construing “internal” that is sufficiently robust to guarantee that reliabilism is “external” has problems accounting for the justification of a whole range of beliefs—from stored beliefs, to beliefs originally justified by now-forgotten evidence, to beliefs about logical and probabilistic relations.

Editor Matthias Steup’s paper, “Epistemic Duty, Evidence, and Internality,” is a response to Goldman’s essay. Steup grants that the accessibility motivation for internalism leads to difficulties but argues one can motivate internalism by appeal to evidentialist principles. I shall have more to say about Steup’s defense of internalism at the end of this review.

Marian David’s paper, “Truth as the Epistemic Goal,” kicks off the fourth section, “Justification and Truth.” David’s paper is a thorough discussion of the relationship between justification and truth. In particular, David considers many possible variations on how to make explicit the “truth goal” (the goal of believing truth while avoiding error) spoken of by epistemologists of all stripes. In the end, David suggests a version of reliabilism that employs a subjunctive truth-goal (for every p, if S were to believe p, then p would be true, and if p were true, S would believe p) as the leading contender.

In “Value Monism in Epistemology,” Michael DePaul argues against the monism of his essay’s title. While some have claimed that truth is the only epistemic goal, DePaul claims that this can be seen to be wrong by considering that knowledge is better than mere true belief; true belief is be valued but not as much as knowledge is. There are, according to DePaul, a number of epistemic values—knowledge, truth, and justification to name a few.

Section V is “Epistemic Virtue and Criteria of Justified Belief.” These two papers seem somewhat thematically distant from their comrades. The first, Ernest Sosa’s reprinted “Reflective Knowledge in the Best Circles,” is concerned with, for example, how Descartes can noncircularly use what he clearly and distinctly perceives to show that God exists and thereby legitimize what is clearly and distinctly perceived. Sosa’s answer is the answer of the externalist: as long as the beliefs used in the proof arise from reliable (or “apt”) faculties they provide Descartes with non-reflective, animal knowledge. By using what we learn from our apt or virtuous faculties, we can achieve reflective knowledge by using our animal knowledge to construct explanations of how we know.

In “Commonsensism in Ethics and Epistemology,” Noah Lemos defends so-called “common sense” in both domains. He argues that beginning the epistemological enterprise with Moorean beliefs such as “I have two hands” is not objectionably parochial; furthermore, Lemos follows Sosa’s lead and argues that as long as these starter beliefs indeed have a positive epistemic status, they can ground our further beliefs—including our beliefs in epistemic principles.

The book’s final section focuses on virtue epistemology. Vrinda Dalmiya’s paper, “Knowing People,” takes its cue from virtue ethics and the method of care. While the notion of epistemic responsibility has a role to play, it is not simply the responsibility of standard deontological theories of justification. Rather the method of care centers the epistemic discussion on cultivating and reinforcing attitudes that are regarded as positive in the wider epistemic community.

Linda Zagzebski’s essay, “Recovering Understanding,” is an example of the way a virtue epistemologist evaluates and analyses an epistemic virtue. Citing the work of Plato and Aristotle on understanding, Zagzebski offers an account that takes understanding’s object to be structures of reality—that is, objects like pieces of art or buildings—rather than propositions that are the objects of knowledge. To understand is to comprehend these structures. Virtue epistemology, Zagzebski argues, is in a better position than non-virtue epistemology to give us workable accounts of subjects like understanding because the former but not the latter is able to accommodate both proposition and nonpropositional subjects.

If one is going to critically discuss a collection of essays in a short review, one will have to do so either by talking only abstractly about the collection as a whole or else by focusing on one particular essay. I shall do the latter. The remainder of this essay is a raises an objection to Steup’s reply to Goldman.

As mentioned above, Steup believes that one aspect of Goldman’s critique of internalism is correct: if the internalist starts with the accessibility constraint, she’ll run into problems. However, not all is lost for the internalist. She can instead motivate her view by adopting an evidentialist account of justification. Moreover, Steup argues, she can motivate her evidentialism by deontology. Steup notes that the relationship between the two is “complex” (p. 137) and that an adequate defense of it would be beyond the scope of his essay. He then gives a sketch of an argument that is prima facie problematic, but since Steup recognizes the sketchiness of his remarks on this score, I’ll not stop here to comment further.

What do we know about the sort of evidentialism that Steup prefers? Although he says rather little about the details, he makes two important theoretical points and then tells us a bit more when he responds to Goldman. Let’s look at these in turn.

Steup tells us that deontology leads to evidentialism. This is because no item can be that in virtue of which S is justified in holding a belief unless S is in “cognitive possession” of that item (p. 137), and the kinds of states that S possesses in the relevant sense are evidential states. So nothing is evidence for S that S does not possess.

The second theoretical point is that one need not have beliefs about what one’s duties are, still less beliefs about how one determines what one’s duty is. Saying he is taking a page from the externalist’s book, Steup maintains that justification requires only that a person has done her duty, not that she know she has done her duty or even be in a position to know it. “[A]ccording to evidentialism, having (undefeated) evidence for p is sufficient for being justified in believing that p. No further condition must be met” (p. 138). Now as it stands, this version of evidentialism would seem to have little to do with deontology. For as we learn a page later, Steup is willing to allow both stored and conscious beliefs to count as evidence. But then it looks as though if I have fifty beliefs that together entail p (and no set of 49 does), and I never put these beliefs together to see the entailment and am not being derelict in my failing to do this, I am nevertheless justified in believing p because I have undefeated (let us suppose) evidence for it. And this might be true even if my reason for believing p has nothing to do with my good evidence.

Let’s now take a look at how Steup’s internalism handles the problems that Goldman raises. The first Steup discusses is the problem of forgotten evidence. Suppose that Sally, an epistemically responsible person, believes that broccoli is good for her by reading it in the New York Times Science section. However, she later forgets where she read it and now only knows she believes it. Goldman claims that the person lacks an internal justification for her belief even though the belief is clearly justified and, if true, even counts as knowledge.

Steup replies that the evidentialist will argue that Sally does have evidence in this case: a memorial seeming. She seems to remember that broccoli is healthy; she also has a background belief that what she seems to remember is usually true. These comprise, Steup assures us, a good evidentialist justification for her broccoli belief. One point to raise here, it seems to me, concerns the epistemic status of stored beliefs. Steup allows these beliefs to play an evidentiary role in the justification of other beliefs. But in order for those beliefs to be justifiers, one would suppose, they must be justified themselves. So that should mean that stored beliefs, even when stored, are justified or unjustified. But then consider Sally’s broccoli belief before she remembers it, when there is no memorial seeming associated with it. One would suppose that if this belief will be justified when it becomes occurrent, it must be justified just before then. But then the justification of the belief doesn’t depend on the memorial seeming.

Be this as it may, Goldman foresees the move Steup makes and says that what this shows is that the kind of justification the internalist can get is not the sort that is crucial for knowledge. To see this, we should reconfigure the Sally case so that she initially forms the belief on the basis of what is known to be a bad source. So suppose also that she acquired this belief in a very unreliable way (and in a way she would take to be unreliable) and that she has not had the belief corroborated in the meantime by trustworthy sources. As with the original case, she doesn’t now remember where she came by the belief; she’s forgotten her source. Yet she has a memorial seeming and knows that she is a responsible believer who generally comes to her beliefs via reliable sources. Goldman claims that Sally is unjustified in her belief in the sense of justification that “carries a true belief a good distance toward knowledge” (Goldman, p 121). Steup rightly takes Goldman’s point here to signal a significant theoretical divide between them. Indeed, I think that this gulf generally exists between internalists and externalists about justification. The externalist and internalist will agree that knowledge requires justified true belief that also satisfies a fourth anti-Gettier condition. They will disagree, however, about how much work the fourth condition does. Traditionally, it has been the condition called on to show why Gettier cases are not instances of knowledge. Consider the following: suppose this were a world in which the demon is very effective at leading you into falsity but in which he screws up once and, quite fortuitously, you believe something true. Let this be a belief that we would typically count as justified—perhaps it is a standard perceptual belief. Is this a Gettier case? If you think it is, then you are likely an internalist who thinks that the fourth condition of knowledge has a lot of work to do. On the other hand, the externalist will typically say that there are no Gettier cases at demon worlds. Getting back to Sally, Goldman believes that the kind of justification that “carries true belief a good distance toward knowledge” is not had in a demon world; Steup and other internalists deny this. Is there any way of adjudicating this dispute without undertaking a general evaluation of the internalism/externalism controversy?

I believe there is. I think there is a rather sizable problem for Steup here; a problem that indicates that deontology and his brand of evidentialism might not rest together as well as he thinks. First, let’s consider the second Sally case from the perspective of deontology; and to do this, let’s consider a point in moral theory. As St. Anselm showed in Cur Deus Homo , the “ought implies can” principle fails when one is culpable for one’s inability to do what one ought. I promise to pay you back tomorrow the $100 I borrowed last week. In the meantime I’ve spent my entire paycheck on CDs, books, and beer; I have only $10 until my next paycheck in two weeks. I now cannot pay you tomorrow. Does that mean that I’m no longer have an obligation and hence will not be culpable for failing to pay? Of course not. My inability to pay today is explained by my earlier misdeed. There may a synchronic notion of doing one’s duty according to which as long as I’m doing the best I can now I am justified in acting as I do, but this is surely not the currency that standard moral evaluations trade in. We expect better of each other. Now I think that the epistemic deontologist should say the same regarding Sally. Sure, given that she believed irresponsibly in the first place and has since forgotten the ground of her belief, there is a synchronic sense of doing one’s epistemic duty in which her current believing is nonculpable. Yet since were it not for her earlier misdeed (believing irresponsibly) Sally wouldn’t now have the broccoli belief, and since all that has happened in the meantime is that Sally has forgotten the source of her belief (hardly an off-setting epistemic virtue), Sally must be judged to not have done her (diachronic) duty in believing as she does.

This result is doubly problematic for Steup. First, these considerations suggest that even if we are thinking of a deontological, internalist sense of justification, we should side with Goldman and say that Sally is unjustified. Second, and more significantly, the above considerations suggest that deontological considerations get on rather poorly with evidentialism. For what I’ve been arguing about the deontological evaluation of Sally’s belief is independent of considerations of the quality of her evidence. What seems clear from Steup’s sketch of evidentialism is that it is a synchronic theory: whether or not one is justified at t depends upon one’s evidence at t; and one’s evidence at t depends only on what’s happening at t. Here then is the big problem: deontological considerations generate a diachronic concept of justification but evidentialist considerations of the sort highlighted by Steup lead to a synchronic notion.

Despite its problems, Steup’s paper is a good read; it advances the internalism/externalism debate by showing that there are conceptual resources for resisting at least some of Goldman’s conclusions. (If evidentialism is unshackled from deontology there might well be sufficient resources for responding to Goldman). In addition to the Steup essay, of the previously unpublished essays, I found those of Ginet, David, Fumerton, and Feldman to be particularly thought provoking and insightful; but the overall quality of the papers is high. Knowledge, Truth, and Duty is well worth the time of any epistemologist.

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The Possession of Knowledge Carries an Ethical Responsibility, Essay Example

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Introduction

Within the field of theories of knowledge, an equally wide range of concerns exist, inherently dependent on those theories themselves.  Discussion here is then as potentially broad as all of human experience, a fact compounded by the inevitable dilemma that the basic subject is so multifaceted.  For example, in examining the issue of whether knowledge carries an ethical responsibility, knowledge itself must be approached as the immeasurably vast expanse it is.  Knowledge comes in innumerable forms, and this alone may create dilemmas of degree, regarding what ethical responsibilities are attached to it.  In the following, the ways in which this statement may be probed will be offered, but there is a resolution that no amount of investigation can offer.  Namely, the ethical responsibility when knowledge is present is very real, but it entirely depends upon the circumstances of the situation, as ethics themselves are rarely absolute. More exactly, if there is a definitive attachment of ethics to knowledge, it can only be expressed as the ethical responsibility to weigh the knowledge as carefully as possible, because it provides the foundation for whatever ethics are to be considered.

If any single factor may be identified as absolutely attaching ethical responsibility to knowledge, it is one ironically removed what any form that responsibility may take.  Namely, it is in being certain of the knowledge in question.  For any idea or information to be so designated, it must be certain and true, at least as far as the individual can know.   This is no small matter.  Put another way, ethical responsibility takes on a completely different meaning if the “knowledge” is in any way questionable.  For example, to have good reason to believe that a structural flaw may endanger people at an event in a stadium presents one kind of ethical obligation, and going to more than a single concern.  The belief expressed, if not valid knowledge of fact, could have serious and damaging consequences for a range of individuals, from the stadium’s owner to the civic authorities or emergency personnel unnecessarily called into action.  If the flaw is ascertained as fact, however, the ethical course is relatively clear, and this example illustrates a case wherein the responsibility and the knowledge are definitely linked.

Other cases, however, are far less easy to identify because, again, knowledge may exist in a wide variety of forms, even when it is certain as knowledge.  The most obvious instance here would be a case wherein the facts known may or may not impact on people dangerously.  A person may know for a fact, for instance, that a certain ingredient in a food product does not provide the health benefits its manufacturers claim it does.  At the same time, the person also knows that no harm is done by the ingredient; that many people likely feel better because they believe in its efficacy; and that letting this information out would cost hundreds of individuals their jobs.  Complicating the matter further is the identity of the knowledge-holder.  More exactly, it is understood that businesses and corporations must operate with an active sense of ethical responsibility.  This has developed into the modern science of corporate social responsibility, although the concept is as old as commerce itself (Schwartz  20).  Organizations must adhere to ethics in regard to knowledge of what they do to comply with social standards and to enhance their status in the eyes of the society, as well as to obey the law.  The corporation and the individual, moreover, face the same dilemma in regard to imparting knowledge, which is that the actual import or value of the knowledge must be assessed as clearly as possible.  What separates them is the degree of responsibility; as the organization is the larger entity and likely to be more impactful, so too is it more ethically obligated to weigh the potential consequences of imparting knowledge.  Nonetheless, and in both cases, there remains the difficulty of understanding the knowledge’s value, and often this is a determination that may be only estimated.

It seems, in fact, that the arena of the subject is limitless, because the factors going to each element of it may so widely vary.  Returning to the example of the food ingredient, it appears that the business bears, again, the greater ethical responsibility to at least employ the knowledge to end the false assumptions.  This is largely prompted by the simple fact that, as the business profits from the product, it is the more ethically indebted to maintain integrity regarding it, and to act upon certain knowledge.  The issue is complicated, however, the one of the dilemmas cited as affecting the individual response; namely, jobs.  If no harm is done and many are earning livelihoods because a product is selling based on false information, determining the greater good is not necessarily easy.  More exactly, the ethics in this case of using or not using knowledge are confronting a pragmatic reality and an ethical abstract, in a sense.  Sharing the knowledge about the product serves the ethical good of honesty to the society, but it also creates the practical damage of adversely affecting lives.  Similarly, as the individual with the knowledge must consider this, so too are they driven to question just how far the ethical responsibilities of a single person go, particularly when no danger is created by remaining silent.  This is, of course, also only one example of how the many forms knowledge may take present complicating factors in determining the ethical course.

There is also the matter, as with knowledge, of comprehending the dimensions of what exactly is meant by “ethical responsibility.”  On one level, most individuals behave in ways reflecting basic responsibilities, in that they “ethically” make themselves available through the critical process of simply attending to an issue or thing.  Ethical responsibility occurs when one person listens to another in an ordinary conversation, because this basic example illustrates the awareness of the other that is essential to ethics itself.  At the same time, there are larger issues of larger responsibilities, and knowledge here, as with the stadium example, takes on a consequently more important role.  Ethical responsibility translates to recognition of the other in personal relationships, but it incorporates themes like justice and equality when a wider public is acknowledged.  This is where, in fact, a theory of knowledge that is inherently social comes into play, and the dimensions are many (Gibbs  133).  It seems reasonable that, to many, acting on knowledge ethically is more easily achieved when the parties involved are single individuals, if only because we tend to assume that this scenario creates a “balance of power.”  The arena is too small and too balanced to admit of serious breaches of ethics.  It is when the polarity is strong, as in the individual’s choosing to reveal information that would affect a corporation and the society, that the dimensions change.

This then opens the door to ethical relativism, in that whatever belief system is being debated in the individual mind reflects ideas instilled from the surrounding culture (Kuhse, Singer  2).  This element must affect any decision or assessments made here, because knowledge, even at its most questionable, is still a commodity to be applied or withheld, and it is difficult to then comprehend just what ethics are involved.  Cultural relativism is inherently problematic, as degrees of ethical judgments vary in different cultures, but it typically holds to the concept that certain ideas are ethically sound for most people, most of the time (Pollock  43).  Examples of just how problematic this renders the issue of ethics related to knowledge are rife in the field of criminal justice.  This area, moreover, serves to illustrate the complexity of the subject by virtue of the fact that the justice system is as near to a set standard of ethics that any society possesses.  This is the agreed-upon framework in which knowledge translates to ethical responsibility, and because the courts themselves are in place to make these determinations.  The “knowledge” is presented at trial or through the authorities, and the ethical effects largely decide the action to be taken.  Even here, however, relativism creates challenges in attaching value to the knowledge because it is in the nature of any culture for these values to shift over time.  Ethics evolve, ideas of what the knowledge actually means changes, and this translates to a change in the knowledge’s essence.  An example of this is how, in previous eras, the concept of date rape was largely unconsidered by the courts as a crime, or gross violation of ethics.  The knowledge was there that a woman was compelled to engage in sex against her will, but this was eclipsed by the further  “knowledge” that such an act was not inherently criminal.  As the society evolved, the ethical incorrectness of such a view was identified, so the initial knowledge took on greater meaning as the latter was dispelled.  Equally importantly, it then became commonly understood that knowledge, or awareness, of such an act required the communicating of it to the proper authorities.  Here, then, relativism adds additional complications to the already highly complex task of assessing whether possession of knowledge translates to ethical responsibility, as the natures of the components themselves undergo shifts in essential meaning.

As the above demonstrates, comprehending the true relationship between ethical responsibility and knowledge is intrinsically difficult at best, simply because circumstances very much go to dictating what those elements actually are.  This understood, then, only one clear response is possible when addressing the scenario of the subject.  It is that, if a definitive attachment of ethics to knowledge may be made, it may only be expressed as the ethical responsibility to weigh the knowledge itself as thoroughly as possible, because the knowledge is the basis upon which the responsibility may be determined.

Works Cited

Gibbs, R.  Why Ethics?: Signs of Responsibilities .  Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Print.

Kuhse, H., & Singer, P.   Bioethics: An Anthology.  Hoboken: Blackwell Publishing, 2006.  Print.

Pollock, J. M.   Ethical Dilemmas and Decisions in Criminal Justice . Belmont: Cengage Learning, 2011.  Print.

Schwartz, M. R.  Corporate Social Responsibility: An Ethical Approach .  Buffalo: Broadview Press, 2011.  Print.

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