Content
Teorie vědy 3/2006



Monika Bartíková:
Introduction                                          5
Margaret Monahan Hogan:
Right to life: An Ontological Foundation                         11
Heinrich Ganthaler:
Ethical Issues in Scientific Research                        31
Josef Dolista, Miroslav Sapík:
Problems of Using of Ethics Standards in Scientific Research            39
Andrzej Kiepas:
Ethics of Science and Technology and Change of Their Rationality        55
Josef Kuře:
Biotechnology Ethics Education                            67
Monika Bartíková:
Public Perception of Biotechnology in the Czech Republic            97
Wendy Drozenová:
Facts and Values                                    111
Lech W. Zacher:
Co-Existence of Sciences (from mono to post-discipliniarity)            123
John W. Moravec:
Chaordic  knowledge  production:
A  systems-based  response  to  critical  education                    149


Reviews:
Andrzej J. Noras:
Fobel, P.; Banse, G.; Kiepas, A.; Zecha, G. (eds.): Rationalität in der Angewandten Ethik. Banská Bystrica: Vydavateľstvo KNIHÁREŇ – Ján Bernát 2004, 246 S.        163
 
RIGHT  TO  LIFE:  AN ONTOLOGICAL  FOUNDATION
Margaret Monahan Hogan

Summary
The right to life is a fundamental right. It is the condition without which no other right can be exercised.  It inheres in the human being as an inalienable right. The right to life as a juristic claim, that is as recognized in the legal order, has its foundation in the determination of the presence of human life. This is a simple claim: namely, that human life throughout its duration – from beginning to end – ought to have legal protection. The issue of the beginning of human life has been presented as problematic in the postmodern period and this status has rendered ambiguous the point of time at which legal protection of human life commences. This paper sorts out these issues and locates the proper domains for their determination. The specification of the beginning of human life is a task for the biological sciences. The scientific determination having been established at syngamy, a metaphysics is required that is rich and sufficient to describe the unfolding of human life and the conditions that are necessary to protect that unfolding. The requisite metaphysics will contain (1) a sufficiently rich notion of potentiality to delineate the trajectory of individual human existence as a being in act with specific active natural potentialities and (2) a sufficiently rich understanding of human life as lived in varying degrees of dependency and autonomy. The establishment of (1) provides the grounding for the right to life – as a juristic right – in this actual being with human potentiality (not a potential human being) and the establishment of (2) provides a counterclaim to the regnant notion that human life has value only when it is autonomous. Recognition of (1) and (2) provides a firm foundation for the peaceful community as inclusive and protective.


ETHICAL  ISSUES  IN  SCIENTIFIC  RESEARCH
Heinrich Ganthaler

Summary
The progress of science gives rise to a wide variety of ethical issues. The aim of this paper is to discuss some of the most important issues with respect to three aspects of scientific research: (1) the selection and evaluation of scientific research projects, (2) the methods applied in scientific research and (3) the publication of scientific results and their application. Moreover, it deals with the question, what ethical principles we should apply in science assessment and when scientific research should be stopped. Finally, some standards for a reasonable ethics of science are developed


PROBLEMS  OF  USING  OF  ETHIC  STANDARDS
IN  SCIENTIFIC  RESEARCH
Josef Dolista, Miroslav Sapík

Summary
In this paper we survey some main arguments for and against using of ethics standards in scientific research.  We distinguish and discuss various kinds of ethics standards. We reconstruct a system of various forms ethical questions. It is well known, at least among professional philosophers, that classical utilitarianism has the implication that there are two ways whereby we can make the world a better place – by making existing creatures happier, or by making happy additional creatures.


ETHICS  OF  SCIENCE  AND  TECHNOLOGY  AND CHANGES  
OF  THEIR  RATIONALITY
Andrzej Kiepas

Summary
The article discusses problems, which are connected with the role of ethics of science and technology. The challenges of ethics of science and technology are connected with the negative effects of development of modern civilisation. The global character of those effects built the challenges for the ethics of science and technology. It is connected with the changes of traditional model of ethics in the area of science and technology. The role of ethics ought to be connected with the changes of rationality of science and technology, and they are connected with: a) the functioning of science and technology as social institutions, b) the methods and c) the ethos and peculiar their responsibility.


BIOTECHNOLOGY  ETHICS  EDUCATION
Josef Kuře

Summary
Fast development of biotechnology during last decades, implying a broad social reflexion, means a new challenge for both morals and ethics education. After basic conceptual clarifications, the article deals with biotechnology as a subject of ethics, subsequently discussing ethics education in science and biotechnology, while comparing education in ethics of science and biotechnology with ethics education in medical and nursing curricula. Finally several examples of ethics education in the field of biotechnology in European and national context are introduced.


PUBLIC PERCEPTION OF BIOTECHNOLOGY
IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC
Monika Bartíková

Summary
The public perception of science does not belong to frequently discussed issues in the Czech Republic. Forty years of the hegemony of the communist regime slowed off the development of science and made any effort of the public to give opinion of science and technology impossible. Communication between the public and experts did not exist. In this paper we would like to inform about the current legislation and regulations in the field of biotechnology in our country, the public attitude to these problems and institutions and organisations that occupy themselves with biotechnology. Finally, we give an overview of international and national surveys, analysing the public perception of biotechnologies.


FACTS  AND  VALUES
Wendy Drozenová

Summary
Philosophical background of ethics of science needs a solution of the problem concerning the relationship between facts and values, the factual and normative spheres. The article tries to answer the question how to get from factual propositions to sentences about values. The problem is known as the Hume´s thesis: “No judgement, saying what there ought to be, can be inferred only from the premises, saying what there is.” The answer given in the paper is this: The normative sphere is not reducible to the sphere of facts and the normative judgements cannot be inferred from factual premises by way of deduction. But certain meta-ethic conclusions show, that values are associated with facts in a way which has its regularities. Because of this, we can believe that they are not independent on factual (empiric, natural) qualities. Therefore, we need not presume their independent existence. Any concept of being implies a relation between facts and values: if we define “the being” as an entity which includes exclusively facts and their mathematical-logical relations, let us not search anything else in it. But after accepting such a definition of being, we cannot cope with the problem of values in an adequate way. Facts and values are abstractions, extracted from the total reality of the meaningful world. As the meaning is non-object, it appears in the world of facts as “no-thing”, that is, “nothing.”


CO-EXISTENCE OF SCIENCES
(from mono to post-discipliniarity)
Lech W. Zacher

Summary
The historical and present assertion that there is insufficient communication and understanding between various types of sciences (e.g. technical and social) appears justified. Their differences and distinctiveness results from differences in analysed matter and the methods and approaches applied. An additional problem are inter-disciplinary barriers, not to mention the „guardians of mono-disciplinary reductionism”.
Meanwhile, the modern world is becoming increasingly complex, multi-dimensional, multi-faceted. Therefore we now speak not only of multi, inter or trans-disciplinary analyses but also of a post-disciplinary approach.
The crossing of these barriers is facilitated by concepts and theories which go beyond a discipline and that are at the same time significant for many disciplines and types of sciences. Here are a few examples: the systems theory, the complexity theory, chaos theory, catastrophe theory, theory of everything, prediction theory, globalisation theory (the later three being controversial). What is postmodernism in this context- maybe the search for some multi-polar subparadigms?
There are also the practical issues of co-operation between sciences, their integration, the achievement of synergies, which is very important in the perspective of knowledge-based societies, where the forefront of humanity is supposedly heading.


CHAORDIC  KNOWLEDGE  PRODUCTION:
A  SYSTEMS-BASED  RESPONSE  TO  CRITICAL  EDUCATION
John W. Moravec

Summary
Proponents of critical education and critical pedagogy call on us to question the “oppressor vs. oppressed” relationships that the global mainstream “banking” system of education enforces (see esp. Freire, 2000).  This practice produces learners that do not have the knowledge and skills to solve their own problems and maximize their individual potential. Systems thinking is the contextual analysis of an organization or process as a whole (Capra, 1996, p. 30; von Bertalanffy, 1968). A future-oriented, systems approach to the examination and redesign of critical education theory yields a chaordic, coconstructivist metatheory that maximizes each individual’s ontological potential.  By building upon an example that employs automated information technology as a mediator in a coconstructivist system, this paper suggests that not only are coconstructivist critical knowledge systems plausible, but the design of the systems themselves need not be designed complexly to exhibit complex, transformative behavior.