UNESCO has assumed the promotion of social and ethical responsibility in issues related with science and technology as one of its main goals for the coming years. There are different ways of doing that. One is through legislation. But another, perhaps the most important, is through education. Science and technology are not “value-free” activities, but “value-laden”, and therefore they must be done and applied with responsibility, that is, taking into account their social and ethical implications.
Science and technology are social phenomena, and for that reason must, not only scientists, but also society, take care of their development and use. Science and technology have the need of social and collective control. It was during the Second World War that people realized the lack of “neutrality” of science and technology. During the 19th Century and the first half of the 20th, scientists assumed the roll of priests of the new era, that in which science would transform reality, conforming a new world plenty of goodness, beauty, pleasure, and perfection. This was a new religion and also a new ethics, with scientists as main actors. As a consequence, they were considered, using the words of Nietzsche, “beyond good and evil”.
This changed dramatically during the Second World War. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on one hand, and Auschwitz and Dachau on the other, showed to the world that science and technology were not neutral, that “science” means “power”, and that this power can not be left in the sole hands of scientists. Society has the responsibility of controlling its development and use. Therefore, the need of moral or ethical education. This is one of the goals of UNESCO. In fact, this was the conclusion of the World Conference on Science and the Use of Scientific Knowledge, that took place in 1999. And UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST) has committed itself to put this Declaration into action. On the other hand the need for sustainable education was expressed at the world conference on sustainable development organized by UN held in Johannesburgh in 2002, and UNESCO was designed as the leader agency for the promotion of the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, starting in 2005.
COMEST worked throughout the first half of 2003 in the attempt to respond to this challenge. The result was the Report entitled The Teaching of Ethics. This document ended with nine recommendations, encouraging universities and other institutions of higher education to promote ethics courses and PhD degrees in Science and Ethics, and urging UNESCO and other international organizations, for example the World Bank, to support ethics teaching in the developing countries.
It is impossible to stress enough the importance of this document, and the need to implement its recommendations. In any case, it gives more importance to the organization of teaching than to how to teach. This report pays no attention to the process of teaching, in favour of other aspects of the problem.
But the process of teaching is essential. There has been in history, as there is today, two extreme and opposite models of teaching ethics. They can be called the “indoctrination” model and the “toleration” model. To Indoctrinate somebody means to make him have a particular set of beliefs, especially by teaching, which exclude all other points of view. The traditional way of indoctrinating people has been catechisation. This has been the classical method of teaching ethics, and it continues to be a very frequent way, especially among some religious, philosophical and political groups.
The main concepts of the opposite model are “toleration” and “neutrality”. This was the ideal promoted by the Liberal thinkers of the 17th and 18th Centuries, especially in Western Europe. Personal beliefs and values are now protected by the new right to “liberty of conscience”. These are private matters, reason why public teaching must remain neutral in this kind of issues. Public schools can not predispose students towards any given conception of good life or towards a particular moral character. The only one thing permitted is what has been called “value clarification”, that is, to help students understand and develop their own values, and to teach them respect for the values of others. There is not a “right” set of values. The problem with this method is that treating every moral opinion as equally worthy encourages students in the false subjectivism that “I have my opinion and you have yours and who’s right?” “If someone says that ‘blacks, Jews, Catholics, and/or homosexuals are inferior beings who shouldn’t have the same rights as the rest of us’ then it is criticism, not just clarification, that is needed.” (Amy Gutmann)
This second mentality, opposite to the first, has been the most preeminent over the last two Centuries. In 1918, immediately after the First World War, the German thinker and sociologist Max Weber wrote: “One can not demonstrate scientifically what the duty of an academic teacher is. One can only demand of the teacher that he have the intellectual integrity to see that it is one thing to state facts, to determine mathematical or logical relations or the internal structure of cultural values, while it is another thing to answer questions of the value of culture and its individual contents and the question of how one should act in the cultural community and in political associations. These are quite heterogeneous problems. If he asks further why he should not deal with both types of problems in the lecture-room, the answer is: because the prophet and the demagogue do not belong on the academic platform.”
The poet William Butler Yeats wrote these two verses:
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
are full of passionate intensity.
This is the model which entered in crisis during the days of the Second World War. There are no “pure facts”, there is not a “value-free” science. Everything in our lives is “value-laden”. And discussions about values are not only possible but also necessary. Values and beliefs are not completely rational; they are influenced by emotions, hopes, desires, education, traditions, etc. They are not completely “rational”, but they must be, at least, “reasonable”. And they must test its reasonableness through the process of deliberation. This is the key word, “deliberation.” Deliberation is the way of analyzing the rational consistency of values and beliefs. Its goal is not to reach a consensus, choosing one value and banning the others. Its aim is to favour a debate between all the people concerned by a problem, in order to increase the wisdom or prudence of our decisions. Different people can reach different conclusions. The aim of deliberation is not to reach one and only one decision, but to increase the wisdom and prudence of all the conclusions reached by the participants at the end of the process.
Deliberation is a difficult task and it needs some preconditions. First, the capacity of assuming that in value questions nobody has all the truth, and that the others may have, at least, as much truth as I have. Second, thinking that the others can help me find the way towards the truth, or in other words, towards the way of being wise and prudent. And the third precondition needed is that we must have the unusual capacity of listening to others. Deliberative skills are not natural but cultural, and therefore they must be trained. Naturally all of us are prone to deny value to the arguments of others, especially when they say things opposite to ours.
Aristotle considered deliberation as the main method of practical reasoning, and more specifically, as the method of ethics. In fact, his great work Nicomachean Ethics consecrated deliberation as the right way in order to take wise decisions. As he said, “deliberation is about the actions a human being can do.” And he added: “What we deliberate about is the same as what we decide to do, except that by the time we decide to do it, is definite, for what we decide to do is what we have judged to be right as a result of deliberation. We have found, then, that what we decide to do is whatever action among those up to us we deliberate about and desire to do.”
Deliberation is the best alternative not only to indoctrination but also to neutrality. There is a plurality of values, and homogeneity in this field is neither possible nor desirable. But we must give reasons to support our own values and beliefs. We must give reasons, first of all, to ourselves, and afterwards to all others. Only by testing the reasonability of our values can we be sure that they are, at least, wise and prudent. And this is everybodys´ moral duty. We all have the moral duty of assuming the more reasonable values. Because they are only reasonable, and not completely rational, we must be convinced that we do not have all the truth, and that the others, defending different values, can have at least as much truth as we have. Nevertheless, they are also obliged to test the reasonability of their values, looking for wisdom and prudence as well. And discussing all together, we will be capable of establishing a core set of values which can be peacefully assumed by all, another set of values to be freely managed by each one of us , and a third of things prohibited to all. Deliberation is the way to define, not only our personal duties, but also the common or collective ones. It is the way of managing our practical life, and, more precisely, private and public morality.
Deliberation is a complex method of reasoning and taking decisions. It takes into account universal principles and values, but also the specific circumstances in which a specific decision must be taken. Its aim is to take the best possible decision, but in a specific situation. To reach this goal, it is necessary to balance all the values concerned as well as the circumstances and consequences. A wise decision must balance all these elements, looking for the best possible solution, that is, the one that optimizes the promotion of the values involved, or, at least, the one that damages them the least.
Deliberation was the method used by Socrates, the father of Western ethical tradition. He did not impose his values to the others, but he deliberated with them in order to deliver the best out of everyone. Deliberation is maieutic. Its goal is that everyone may give the best of his self.
Describing his own method, Socrates said: “My art of midwifery is in most respects like theirs […] The triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth. And like the midwives, I am barren, and the reproach which is often made against me, that I ask questions of others and have not the wit to answer them myself, is very just, the reason is, that the god compels me to be a midwife, but does not allow me to bring forth. And therefore I am not myself at all wise, nor have I anything to show which is the invention or birth of my own soul, but those who converse with me profit. Some of them appear dull enough at first, but afterwards, as our acquaintance ripens, if the god is gracious to them, they all make astonishing progress.”
Ladies and gentlemen. This procedure, which was in its very beginning the real method of ethics, disappeared shortly after, being substituted by the other two: indoctrination and neutrality. It is time to amend that situation and promote its use, training people in the deliberative skills from the very beginning, in the years of primary school, until the highest levels of the educational process. We are in need of a deliberative society. In my opinion this should be the UNESCO’s lemma during the decade of ethical education which is now beginning. The UN has established the promotion of “sustainable development” as one of its goals, being the only possible way to surpass the untenable development of the First World as well as the untenable underdevelopment of the Third. I think that UNESCO should design another program, which attempts to avoid both historical untenable extremes in value education: indoctrination and value neutrality, and which promotes “deliberative education” as a third way. Sustainable development and deliberative education: these are, perhaps, two of the most important goals to be achieved during the next ten years. Bringing them both together is, probably, the best way to implement the mandate of UN to UNESCO of being the leading agency for the promotion of the “Decade of Education for Sustainable Development,” started this January. Promotion of Sustainable Development through Deliberative Education: this is, in my opinion, the goal. That is, at least, my proposal.