Precautionary Principle, Pluralism And Deliberation: Science And Ethics

This volume tackles the burden of judgment and the challenges of ethical disagreements, organizes the cohabitation of scientific and ethical argumentations in such a way they find their appropriate place in the political decision. It imagines several forms of agreements and open ways of conflicts resolution very different compared with ones of the majority of political philosophers and political scientists that are macro-social and general. It offers an original contribution to a scrutinized interpretation of the precautionary principle, as structuring the decision in interdisciplinary contexts, to make sure to arrive this time to the “Best of the Worlds”.

In its first part, the book goes beyond the epistemic “abstinence” we meet in a lot of political theories, in the name of the Rawlsian burden of judgment or because these theories are underdetermined regarding the argumentative requirement they claim (Habermas or the theory of the deliberative democracy). This book defends an ethical pluralism, a third way distinct of relativism or monism. It presents an exhaustive view of the ethical theories and reintroduces them in the dialogical and interdisciplinary theory of argumentation. In the same vein this book presents several forms of ethical pluralism of values.

In its second part, it joins these problems and the ones of decision in situation of uncertainty, the coexistence of sciences in assessment, a distinction of scientific and ethical values that is not a dichotomy, and a confrontation of hypotheses. It explores into details how the precautionary principle characterizes the different uncertainty sources in the scientific work and proposes to lean on it to distribute disciplines assessing technologies according to the distinction between entre experts and scientific, and to make sure an epistemic pluralism (inter-disciplinary and intra-disciplinary). Finally this study defends a new meta-ethical pluralist theory at the same level as the power of the actual controversial technologies and environmental challenges. From this point of view it answers some limitation of Hans Jonas’ ethics, because it thinks the ethical pluralism, the development of a public policy and more nuanced models of justification.