Ethics Expertise between Imagined Publics and Imagined Scientists

Abstract

The notion of value-neutral or at least independent scientific expertise is mainly based on the distinction between statements of facts and value judgement. The functioning of ethics committees, in particular bioethics committees, demonstrates that this separation is doomed to fail. These committees are supposed to regulate the production of new scientific knowledge through appeal to extra-scientific, non-epistemic values. In making regulatory judgments, the committees find themselves on the edge of a tension between `cognitive democracy' and epistemic inequality. Сommittees have a duty to represent the interests of the public, protecting its dignity and freedoms from possible abuse from researchers. At the same time, the committees, by conducting an “internal” judgment on the ethical permissibility of research projects, remain part of scientific groups and institutions. However, members of ethics committees often imagine academic colleagues as having an incomplete, deficient view of the public good. The committees find themselves in a field of conflict between the epistemic deficits of the imagined public and the ethical deficits of imagined scientists. However, counteracting this double deficit logic can take the form of an ethical abstinence that shuts down the possibilities of value-laden imagination. Moreover, such withdrawal itself is ideologically engaged. The program of `critique of forms of life' can be seen as setting the overall perspective of combining representation with the possibilities of normative judgment. This combination is particularly relevant in light of the ongoing debates about moral enhancement and human genome editing, since both areas of biomedical inquiry involve biotechnological and social transformation of human forms of life.