Are there apparent limitations with this? I've done the quantifying (but there may be more human measures to ascertain), but what about the installation of these procedures?
Grades are a measure of how smart one is. Income is a measure of success. Statistics, numbers, symbols, lines on a graph, and labels are used to measure all types of things. Smart people do not necessarily always get good grades. The fact that someone is labeled as lower class does not mean that they are unsuccessful. If we had someway of measuring the ethicacy of the use of biotechnology on animals, what would it matter? In Max's senerio, the fact that a researcher is purposely inflicting pain on an animal in order to get this data in the first place is completely against research ethics. No EEG, z-score, t-test, quasi-experimental design, or hedonistic calculus is a sufficient way to measure suffering units. What would the numbers really tell us? Numbers do not change anything. When a biotechnologist thinks that changing the organs and tissues of livestock will greatly benefit humans, they will find a way to justify it no matter what the majority of people think is right or what the level of suffering units will be. So thinking of a way to measure the ethicacy of biotechnology seems useless to me.
Questions: Who decides if an experiment should or should not be carried out? (playing devil's advocate) On what grounds do philosopher's have a right to prevent future advancements in medicine?
1 comments:
Hold up. I did not propose that any researcher would at all intentionally harm the animal to find these units. I'm saying that if harm was to be considered during any sort of experiment carried out, that it could be measured (like what Bermond was talking about with the fish.)
Also, while I do consider that many quantifying procedures like tests and such are less than adequate, this also runs into the scenario that Dr. Johnson posed... If intention was the sole basis of every argument, nothing would really get done. Sure, it's nice that I have a disposition for psychology, but what do my GRE scores say about it? It's an emotional struggle, for sure, but it's an important part of the professional world.
Post a Comment