MICRO AND MACRO ETHICS FOR AN ANTHROPOGENIC EARTH

By Brad Allenby

Brad Allenby is professor of civil and environmental engineering, and of law, at Arizona State University.  He holds a BA from Yale University, a J.D. and M.A. (Economics) from the University of Virginia, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in environmental science from Rutgers University.

The title states two major assumptions, and suggests a third.  First, it makes a differentiation between “microethics,” or ethics at the individual level, and “macroethics,” or ethics at a group or professional level [1] [2] .  Second, it recognizes that a principal result of the Industrial Revolution and concomitant demographic, economic, technological and social changes, is a planet where the dynamics of most major natural systems are increasingly shaped by human activity [3] .  Indeed, as Nature put it in a 2003 editorial, “Welcome to the Anthropocene” – welcome to the Age of Man [4] .  Third, that this article is being written at all suggests a final point --that there is a gap between our current ethical systems and the world we have created, that it is a major gap, and that addressing it requires the serious and integrated efforts of the technical, scientific, and philosophic communities.

It is useful to consider engineering examples to set the stage somewhat, because engineering professions have long had explicit codes of ethics directed at the behavior of individual engineers [1] [5] .  Initially, consider the Portuguese ship engineer who built the first caravel, a light sailing ship of the 14^th century that was particularly adept at sailing into the wind, and accordingly was a basic design enabling European global expansion [6] .  If caravels sank because of bad design, few would have qualms about assigning ethical responsibility to the engineer – certainly we can assume the royal patron would.  However, the caravel is not only a good design, but a critical technology for subsequent European colonization and the resultant Eurocentric global culture; here, it strikes most people as inappropriate to assign responsibility for the subsequent colonization process, with all of its social and environmental dimensions, to the individual engineer.  There are simply too many unpredictable intervening decisions, and stochastic events.  A more recent example of this micro/macro gap is provided by the Internet.  It is a complex system which is clearly entirely human in origin, for every piece of it, from routers, to transmission infrastructure, to personal computers used to access it, is of human design and manufacture.  On the other hand, the Net itself has been designed by no single individual or institution; indeed, there are not even any good maps of the Internet, for it continually redesigns itself.  It is a self-organizing system [7] .  So while society would be quite right to hold a design team that made a new router responsible for the safety and performance of that piece of equipment, it would be dubious indeed to charge the design team with responsibility for the social and environmental effects of the Internet as a system.  These effects are far beyond the capability of any engineer or design team to predict or foresee; indeed, it is quite apparent that for the most part they are not perceived or understood very well by society as a whole [8] .  Microethical systems – ethics at the level of the individual as a member of a particular culture or profession – are not free of disagreement and complexity, but at least they are well tilled ground.  Macroethics, however, cannot be constructed simply by raising microethics to the level of a professional society.  Rather, as the two examples above suggest, they are much more: they are the beginning of creating an ethics appropriate for the large and tightly coupled economic, social, environmental and technological systems that characterize the Anthropocene, systems such as the Everglades; the climate system; technological systems such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, information and communications technology, and cognitive sciences [9] ; and urban systems and their sometimes global hinterlands.  In short, macroethics is the study of ethical systems appropriate to complex adaptive systems, in particular those global integrated human/natural systems that are characteristic of the anthropogenic Earth.  This is the “macroethical gap,” for how to formulate ethical structures adequate for such challenges has yet to be effectively addressed.  Addressing macroethics does not, of course, negate the value or importance of microethical systems, whether personal or professional.  Even in an anthropogenic world many ethical issues continue to arise in the realm of individual decisions.  But such a world also exhibits emergent behaviors at high levels of the system, and there the prevailing models break down for a number of reasons, many of which arise from the fundamental unpredictability of emergent behavior, and related questions of “control” (if one controls a system, one may be held responsible for its behavior; if one does not or, indeed, cannot, imposition of ethical responsibility is problematic). 

Here it is hard to avoid at least some observations on free will, despite the difficulty of that subject (as Jalalu’ddin Rumi, the 12^th century Persian poet, observed, “there is a disputation [that will continue] till mankind are raised from the dead between the Necessitarians and the partisans of Free Will.” [10]   Free will matters in part because in many cultures - including the dominant Eurocentric globalized culture - ethical responsibility accompanies decisions made where free will is felt to exist, but not where actions do not arise from free will.  Thus, ethical responsibility is generally not attributed where actions are taken under duress, or by individuals who are incapable for some reason, such as mental illness, of exercising free will.  This, however, poses a severe problem when moving from the (already difficult) context of individual action to actions intended to affect complex adaptive systems; one cannot simply “scale up” the traditional dialogs.  For example, the two touchstones generally used for judging the ethical posture of an action are by a) intent, or b) actual consequences (or some combination of the two).  But such traditional approaches arguably assume a simple system structure, where enough can be known at the time a decision is taken to be able to impute moral responsibility for the results of that decision.  If, instead, the systems are inherently unknowable – as complex adaptive systems by definition are beyond at least a trivial point - then one can neither have an honest intention as to what one hopes to achieve (because the complexity of the system response means intent is essentially irrelevant, since whatever the individual wants is unlikely to occur), nor can one be judged by the consequences, which are beyond the individual’s ability to determine, and become apparent only over significant timeframes. 

This observation, based on the characteristics of complex adaptive systems, has two significant implications.  First, although the locus of free will remains the individual, the exercise of free will becomes a function of the state of the system within which the individual is located.  Free will becomes a question of context, not just an inherent characteristic of a human being.  As an important corollary, this means that the interconnectivity and internal dynamics of complex systems become additional constraints on the exercise of individual free will.  Complex interlinking technology systems such as the Internet, or major urban systems, or regional resource regimes such as the Everglades or the marshes in Iraq, limit option spaces within which free will can be exercised.  Thus, free will, which has always been regarded as adhering to the individual, in fact becomes a complex property of systems state.  Individual free will, as assumed in professional ethics guidelines, or for that matter the criminal law, represents the subset of free will situations where the complex system dimension is minimal or absent.

Perhaps more importantly, these characteristics of free will in complex systems mean that ethical implications adhere less to specific choices regarding actions, and more to an on-going choice of process by which individuals and the institutions of which they are a part choose to interact with the relevant system.  Macroethics thus differs from microethics in requiring a greater concern with processes, as opposed to single actions.  Each has its role, but it is a fatally flawed category mistake not to recognize their differences.  

For example, if one is given the responsibility to design the Everglades – and, in doing so, to try to balance among other things human development, agricultural and mining interests, and environmental interests such as avian biodiversity – the results of many individual decisions are difficult to determine except as the response of the overall system becomes clear.  Therefore, an individual action is not ethically meaningful when taken, but only as it becomes reified in the system with which the individual is interacting.  Thus, the choice of the process by which the individual becomes engaged in a dialog with the system – and remains engaged at least until the effects of action are manifested in system state and behavior - is what becomes ethically critical.  For example, an engineer may choose any one of a number of particular actions – channelizing a stream, planting a marsh to reduce phosphorous concentrations in agricultural runoff – but because the potential outcomes of each action become clear only as the system adjusts, the engineer is behaving unethically if she or he doesn’t monitor the results of the chosen action, and modify them accordingly.  In other words, it is the choice not to adopt a process that fits the system that is unethical, for to so choose is to deliberately undermine the ability to exercise free will in the context of the complex adaptive system.  Free will and ethical responsibility in complex systems such as the Everglades thus becomes less of a point function, and more of a networked function spread over multiple spatial and temporal scales.  Just as quantum mechanics did not obsolete Newtonian physics, but relegated it to a limited space (e.g., interaction of macro bodies), the traditional concept of free will is thus not obsolete, but is a bounded part of a much more complex, systems-based phenomenon.

So how can we begin moving towards a macroethical capability to complement the microethical systems we now have?  To begin with, it seems necessary to reject the common approach of projecting individual ethical responsibility to the scale of these systems.  It is simply untenable to make individual scientists or engineers responsible for the behavior of systems to which they may have contributed, but which in many cases are self-organizing and demonstrate behaviors which are unpredictable, become apparent only over significant time periods, are characterized by a multitude of events and decisions between the individual decision and eventual social and cultural responses, and exhibit tenuous connections, if any, between specific individual design decisions and overall system responses.  Actually, pushed to its limit, such an ethical posture is simply a mechanism to attempt to freeze scientific and technological evolution. 

This does not mean that the individual does not have an important responsibility, however.  In line with the process ethics discussion above, it seems quite reasonable to charge the individual scientist or engineer with a fundamental responsibility to ensure that mechanisms are established by which scientific and technical communities, and society at large, can dialog with complex adaptive systems, such as NBIC convergence, the Everglades, the climate cycle, the carbon or nitrogen cycles, or Phoenix or New York City [11].  The nature of such a dialog, which must be highly multidisciplinary and multicultural, is itself a reason why individuals cannot carry such a burden in a substantive sense, for no single individual has the requisite knowledge, and very few have the ability to suspend their own ontologies, as such a dialog requires.  Individuals of all kinds, from engineers to scientists to environmentalists, can, however, certainly be charged with ethical responsibility for supporting the procedural process.  The dialog itself will have to rest with an institutional host – one that combines technical knowledge with a broad, transparent and open process, and that is sensitive to its own agendas and ontologies, and can be explict about them without imposing them on the dialog.  Moreover, such dialogs should be, and should be seen to be, relatively safe from capture by a particular religious or political agenda, a problem that some have noted with regard to stem cell research in the United States, for example.

Thus, while one might not hold the individual engineer responsible for the Internet, or the individual scientist with responsibility for nanotechnology, one could charge them with the ethical responsibility to push their professional organizations – such as the AAAS, the IEEE, the National Academy of Engineering, or perhaps in some circumstances an academic institution or a National Laboratory – to create an institutional framework within which an on-going macroethical capability is established.  In so doing, we begin to move towards a framework that remains based on individual free will and ethical responsibility, but that reflects the increasing complexity of the problems, options, and constraints that characterize the anthropogenic earth.

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Masters of Arts in Bioethics – The Center for Bioethics and Health Law and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh is offering a Masters degree that emphasizes the philosophical foundation of bioethics with opportunities for clinical experience in a one-year program. For information, contact Director of Admissions, Center for Bioethics and Health Law at bioethic@pitt.edu or visit www.pitt.edu/~bioethic.

Call for Papers – Papers are invited for the special issue “Reliability and Security of Information” of the Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society.  The deadline for submissions is July 31, 2005.  Papers may be submitted to ices@troubador.co.uk with a cover email stating the author’s name, address and affiliation.  For further details, see the journal’s website at www.troubador.co.uk/ices.

Call for Abstracts – Abstracts are invited for a collection of essays dealing with bioethical issues in film.  Some of the areas of interest are: abortion; the moral status of human embryos and human embryonic stem cell research; reproductive technologies (e.g., artificial insemination, cloning); eugenics and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis; enhancement technologies and the distinction between treatment and enhancement; end-of-life issues and euthanasia; justice and the allocation of health care resources; the commodification of human organs; surrogate motherhood; and feminist and cross-cultural approaches in bioethics.  Also welcome are abstracts on any film that explores bioethical issues (e.g., Gattaca, Million Dollar Baby).  Submission deadline is July 1, 2005.  For more information, contact Sandra Shapshay, Editor, at sshapsha@indiana.edu.

ORI adds "Point for Discussion" to Webpage – The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has added a feature called “Point for Discussion,” which details notable comments published in journals and reports by scientific organizations, associations, and government agencies, on the state of the research enterprise.  A new Point is presented each month to help stimulate discussion about research integrity, research misconduct and responsible conduct of research (RCR) during lab meetings or workshops.  For further information, see http://ori.hhs.gov.

Award for Excellence – The Health Improvement Institute is accepting nominations for its 2005 Award for Excellence in Human Research Protection.  This award honors excellence in promoting the well being of research participants.  The nomination deadline is September 26, 2005.  For more information, contact the Awards Coordinator at 301 816 2875 or at hii@hii.org; or visit www.hii.org. 

New Multi-Media Educational Program – The Center for Health Care Ethics at Saint Louis University and the Continuing Education Department at the Missouri Institute of Mental Health announce a new nine session course, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, entitled “Ethics in Mental Health Research.” The program will begin August 24, 2005 onsite at the Missouri Institute of Mental Health, or by distance-learning through Web cast.  To find out more about the course or register, visit http://www.emhr.net/course.htm.

New Educational Tools – Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIM&R) is offering two new programs designed for new administrators, staff and chairs in IRB or IACUC administration.  The courses, “IRB Administrator 101” and “Essentials of IACUC Administration” will be held August 15-16, 2005 at the Drake Hotel in Chicago, IL.  For registration details and agenda information, visit http://www.primr.org/education/2005_IRB_ADMIN_A/overview_ADA05.html. 

International Joint Bioethics Congress – The sixth Asian Bioethics Congress is scheduled to be held in Sanliurfa, Turkey November 14-18, 2005.  The chosen theme is “Inter-Cultural Bioethics: Asia and the West.”  The congress is open to the general public and experts in a wide range of different disciplines.  The languages will be in Turkish and English, with simultaneous translation available.  Visit the conference website http://www.jointbioethics.org/ENG/welcome.htm or contact the conference organizer, Dr. Sahin Aksoy, at saksoy@harran.edu.tr for more information.

New NSF Program – The National Science Foundation (NSF) has instituted a new program called Science and Society (S&S), which is a consolidation of two previous programs: Science and Technology Studies Program and the Societal Dimensions of Engineering, Science, and Technology Program.  The new S&S Program may be found at http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5324&org=SBE&from=home.