lead to policy formation.
2.2.2.1 Science and Value
The question—What do we value?—takes on complexity and nuance when drawing science into the picture. The place of science raises two challenges. First, if science is value-neutral, then all the ethicist can do is paint values over science, distorting science. Second, whichever moral color the ethicist selects will seem to be arbitrary, merely the color of the moral painter’s subjective choice. Let us look at these two challenges in turn.
First, should we paint science with an ethical brush? If we do, would ethical deliberation distort value-free science? Or, should we ask a bit critically: Can science actually claim to be value-neutral in the first place? Scientists certainly strive for objectivity, employing multiple tests by blind referees to confirm or disconfirm a hypothesis. Such honest rigor is to be commended, even applauded. Yet, beneath the value-free patina, scientific research is always guided by either a worldview or by someone’s vested interests. Big science as practiced today requires funding, and funding is supplied only by funders who are expressing their agendas.
Money talks. Power speaks. Space Studies researcher Mark Bullock alerts us to the force of financial influence. “The role science will play in determining the quality of life for every human being on the planet is of course determined by the elite that funds science. In this way all scientific enterprise is embedded in the greater moral problem of how individuals and groups should conduct themselves” [2.10].4 In short, follow the money.
However, following the money is not enough. All moral issues cannot be reduced to money. A more subtle concern must be addressed. We must ask whether values or morals or obligations are inherent to scientific research and technological development, or if the ethicist must add it. Alternatively, we might ask whether values are inherent to the subject matter science studies—namely, nature—so that, even if science is value-neutral, nature is not?5 Might we find value concerns rising up either from nature itself or from the science we employ to explain nature? If the answer is affirmative in either case, then science and value come together in a single package; and to separate science from value would constitute an abstraction.
To say it another way: human life is fundamentally and inextricably embedded in nature; and this embeddedness is already value-laden. Therefore, when the scientific method excises only objective data from our already value-rich experience with nature—drawing a picture of nature as valueless—this amounts to an abstraction. The value-free conclusion of science is actually an assumption; it is a circular argument that does not account for our fundamental relationship of the human within nature.
Despite the abstractive component to this method, we will operate here with the hypothesis that ethics and what science learns about nature are co-original; they belong together in the relationship between nature, science, and the wider culture.
When nature herself emits value, the ethicist does not simply paint values over an otherwise neutral physical world. The ethicist needs to demonstrate that the values already at work in scientific discovery can be subjected to analysis, their presuppositions exposed and made available for ethical critique. With existing value assumptions then out in the light, the ethicist can coax the researcher toward self-conscious realism, authenticity, and care. Research scientists, in large part, concur. UNESCO rejoices in that “the world of scientific and technical research now regards ethical reflection as an integral part of the development of its own domain” [2.30]. An Astroethics of Responsibility will rely on the hypothesis that science and ethics belong intrinsically together; and we will see just how illuminating this exercise might be.
2.2.2.2 Religious Reliance on the Common Good
In addition to hypothesizing that ethics is inherent within the scientific interpretation of nature, should the scientific enterprise allow itself to be painted with a religious brush? Do ethicists working within a specific religious orientation have any right to speak to the direction taken by science?
Durham University astrotheologian and astronomer David Wilkinson [2.92] relies on the hypothesis that science and its subject matter, the natural world, already emit moral valence. With the prospect of meeting extraterrestrial life on an exoplanet, Wilkinson reminds us that “theology will want to stress the importance of an ethical dimension in any contact with life-forms elsewhere in the Universe” [2.67]. Note that Wilkinson will not simply paint religious values over an otherwise value-free scientific discovery. Rather, as a theologian-scientist hybrid, he will recognize values as they arise from the new situation. It is inherent to the theological task to engage in ethical speculation and moral commitment and, in this case, theological speculation responds to what we will learn through science about the natural realm.
With such a theological perspective, a Christian moral posture would be erected on God’s plan for a promised new creation [2.67]. That new creation entails an important moral norm, namely, the “common good.” A middle axiom that connects God’s promised new creation to the present moment is our vision of the common good, symbolized biblically as the eschatological Kingdom of God.
Pope Paul VI defined the common good as “the sum of those conditions of social life which allow social groups and their individual members relatively thorough and ready access to their own fulfillment” [2.89]. Saint Pope John XXIII previously said clearly that “the attainment of the common good is the sole reason for the existence of civil authorities” [2.94]. The Lutherans have extended the common good to embrace all of life without directly specifying extraterrestrial life.
“Today, the meaning of ‘common good’ or ‘good of all’ must include the community of all living creatures. The meaning also should extend beyond the present to include consideration for the future of the web of life. The sphere of moral consideration is no longer limited to human beings alone” [2.29].
What the Holy See and the Lutherans make explicit is already implicit within naturally derived ethical insights, namely, the moral responsibility of governments and all persons of good will is to serve the common good.
Let me entertain two likely objections to this theological input into astroethics. First, one might object that this is only what Christians think. Christianity is only one religion among many; and adherents to other religious beliefs have their own ethical groundings and norms. To make matters more complicated, moral values are relative to one’s culture and context and personal preferences. A Christian has no right to superimpose sectarian morality on those who do not freely affirm the same basic commitment. To put it another way: the ethical ground on which a Christian stands is shifting sand for the non-Christian.
Let me respond. Christians live in neighborhoods with Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, and atheists, among others. Despite this diversity, however, we all live in a shared planetary community, or at least within a worldview that makes a shared planetary community plausible. At some level, shared ethical commitments and responsible moral behavior are indispensable for any communal cooperation in pursuit of the common good.
When it comes to space ethics, we must think of the entire human race on the third planet from the sun as a single community of moral deliberation. “The world common good demands the existence of a world community, a planetary public consisting of all those affected by the actions of others on earth,” writes Georgetown University political scientist, Victor Ferkiss [2.31]. What this implies is that public ethical reasoning—the ethical reasoning by Christian ethicists as well as ethicists coming from any other tradition—must be sufficiently transparent as to make sense for a collection of diverse perspectives while lifting up a vision of the common good. This is what I am attempting here, even if briefly.
A second objection might come from postcolonial or postmodern critics who decry the ideal of a single global community of moral deliberation. Why do they object? Because such an ideal of a universal humanity is a distinctively “modern” and, therefore, outdated idea. The problem is this: Such a global ethic would rely upon universal thin values apart from any tradition-specific thick values. The thick traditional practices of specific moral communities