In an article titled Pandemic, science and free will published late August 2020 in the review L’Internazionale, the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek explains how, all over the world, the predominant attitude towards the pandemic is not, as we would expect, having a deep interest and motivation to know and understand how the virus functions in order to be able to control and to stop its spreading. On the contrary, the most diffused attitude is “a will not to know” too much about it, since a detailed knowledge of the way the virus spreads and affects the human body could badly limit our daily life . One of the issues to be taken into account is a vision of scientific knowledge as the main and absolute reference, which is acquiring more and more power as it is considered the basis for prescriptions that define and orient individual and collective behaviours, not offering possible alternative choices. This vision, rooted into a Positivistic understanding of the sciences and of their function and role in society, has been strongly criticized over time from different perspectives. As Žižek points out, the price that a society pays in this circumstance is a separation between science and ethics, according to which people know what science says but decide (on the basis of free will) to act as if they did not know it. This opens up a wide distance between people and science which is also at the basis of an increasing diffidence towards the aims and scopes of scientific inquiry. Nonetheless, as Horovitz points out, the positivist vision of science has been countered by the emergence of a “second sense of science” which “in a subtle but convincing way, has emerged among scholars leaving wide space for doubt and speculation on ultimate moral issues” (Horovitz, 1988). This second sense is more consistent with a pragmatist understanding which has its deepest roots in the Deweyan vision of the scientific spirit and of the relationship between science and society that in my opinion, can be an effective reference to reconstruct contemporay public understanding of science, according to a different vision of the public within a democratic society, overcoming the separation between science and ethics highlighted by Žižek.

“Science, Ethics, and the Pandemic” / Striano, Maura. - (2021). (Intervento presentato al convegno SOCIETY FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY 48th ANNUAL MEETING , Panel: The Deweyan Task Before Us: The New Global Paradigm for Philosophy, Education, and Democracy Emerging from the Pandemic tenutosi a On line nel March 11-13, 2021).

“Science, Ethics, and the Pandemic”

Maura Striano
2021

Abstract

In an article titled Pandemic, science and free will published late August 2020 in the review L’Internazionale, the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek explains how, all over the world, the predominant attitude towards the pandemic is not, as we would expect, having a deep interest and motivation to know and understand how the virus functions in order to be able to control and to stop its spreading. On the contrary, the most diffused attitude is “a will not to know” too much about it, since a detailed knowledge of the way the virus spreads and affects the human body could badly limit our daily life . One of the issues to be taken into account is a vision of scientific knowledge as the main and absolute reference, which is acquiring more and more power as it is considered the basis for prescriptions that define and orient individual and collective behaviours, not offering possible alternative choices. This vision, rooted into a Positivistic understanding of the sciences and of their function and role in society, has been strongly criticized over time from different perspectives. As Žižek points out, the price that a society pays in this circumstance is a separation between science and ethics, according to which people know what science says but decide (on the basis of free will) to act as if they did not know it. This opens up a wide distance between people and science which is also at the basis of an increasing diffidence towards the aims and scopes of scientific inquiry. Nonetheless, as Horovitz points out, the positivist vision of science has been countered by the emergence of a “second sense of science” which “in a subtle but convincing way, has emerged among scholars leaving wide space for doubt and speculation on ultimate moral issues” (Horovitz, 1988). This second sense is more consistent with a pragmatist understanding which has its deepest roots in the Deweyan vision of the scientific spirit and of the relationship between science and society that in my opinion, can be an effective reference to reconstruct contemporay public understanding of science, according to a different vision of the public within a democratic society, overcoming the separation between science and ethics highlighted by Žižek.
2021
“Science, Ethics, and the Pandemic” / Striano, Maura. - (2021). (Intervento presentato al convegno SOCIETY FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY 48th ANNUAL MEETING , Panel: The Deweyan Task Before Us: The New Global Paradigm for Philosophy, Education, and Democracy Emerging from the Pandemic tenutosi a On line nel March 11-13, 2021).
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11588/852961
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