4.2.3.1. Responsibility as care (10)

The idea of responsibility as virtue does not necessarily involve looking into care ethics. Indeed, considerations of the virtues that must be acquired and put into practice by scientists (such as honesty, precision and humility) are not lacking, as highlighted in Chapter 1. A similar line of thought could concern the participants in innovation. Nevertheless, the literature dedicated to or close to RRI takes an interest in responsibility as care, and, with a few adaptations⁹, takes from it an original framework for RRI.

For example, Kermish [KER 12, p. 93], in line with the works of Ladd [LAD 91], states that responsibility can refer to “the absence of care or concern for the welfare of others”. Of course, this interpretation of responsibility (as blameworthiness) is negative: it corresponds to the idea that individuals are responsible (blameworthy) for any bodily or material damages that they inflict upon one or several other individuals, and also for a lack of care or concern for their well-being. However, from this remark we can draw a more positive vision of responsibility, according to which we are responsible for the well-being of the other human beings to whom we are connected.

More specifically, Adams and Groves [ADA 11] place the origin of this type of responsibility within the caring relationship that unites us with others (family, colleagues, fellow citizens, etc.). Because we care about certain other people, we take action to improve their well-being. In contrast with what is stated by theories of social contract, “we do not act because of a sense that the other person is of equal value to ourselves, but because they are of special and unique value to us” [ADA 11]. Thus, “the value of the relationship is the key factor in motivating responsible action, and it is also the object of acting responsibly” [ADA 11].

This specific relationship which can unite us with others, and which pushes us to care about them, comes from the ontological relationship we maintain with others. Groves [GRO 14, p. 134] defines our ability to build relationships as a “flexible and resilient response to the vulnerability” of the other person, which takes the form of an “attachment and care for attachment”. This attachment emerges both as something “existentially natural” and as something “desirable, for the type of beings that humans are” [GRO 14].

Whether in the works that give birth to the ethics of care (for example those of Carol Gilligan, Nel Noddings or Sara Ruddick) or in those that apply it to the case of RRI [GRI 13], caring about (and for) the other person always emerges from an expression of vulnerability by that person.

Initially, in fact, the ethics of care were used as a basis for analyzing the relationships between care givers and care receivers in the fields of medicine and family [GIL 82, TRO 93]. These approaches endeavored to place the many already existing care practices at the forefront of thinking, by which care givers attempt to reduce the suffering or distress of others. These practices contribute to the common good in a way that is completely neglected by hypothetical theories of justice (those in line with John Rawls’ Theory of Justice, for example).

Within the particular framework of RRI, Grinbaum and Groves [GRI 13], referencing the political theorist Goodin [GOO 85], state that the responsibility we have toward future generations in no way arises from an intergenerational social contract (as is the assumption of contractualist thinkers) but from the vulnerability¹⁰ that our current actions are helping to create for the future, and more specifically for future beings.

Following on from the work of Jonas [JON 84], one possible way to respond to this vulnerability involves looking at the relationship between creator and innovation through the metaphor of the parent–child relationship¹¹. The participants in innovation and research seem to be responsible for the science and technology that they help to develop, just as parents are responsible for their children’s growth and ability to thrive. In other words, researchers and participants in innovations can “teach” or “encode” [GRI 13, p. 131] certain virtues and values onto their creations and activities, in a way that is analogous to the way parents shape the education of their children.

Of course, this metaphor encounters several limitations, notably because the processes through which a child becomes an adult and acquires a certain autonomy from his or her parents does not easily compare with the relative autonomy acquired by a technology in relation to its creator or creators. But, ultimately, what is important is of another order and is mostly based on the fact that the creators of an innovation influence the development of that creation, imprint certain values onto it and, when they are responsible, shape it in a morally appropriate way. This is also implied and encouraged by “sensitive design” approaches [KEL 09, VAN 13].

The understanding of responsibility as a disposition to care about the outcome of the technologies and sciences that we help to develop, as well as the individuals who use them (or who suffer their consequences), allows an ontological link to be established between the participants in innovation and research, the results of their activities and the group of people affected by them. Because science and technology serve as a medium between the world and living beings, and from being to being, they create specific attachment relationships that contain within them both prospective and retrospective forms of responsibility.

Another particularly interesting dimension to responsibility as care is that it allows us to go beyond a purely consequentialist and rationalist interpretation of anticipation. If we return to the parent–child metaphor, the parents care about the future of their children and make many decisions depending on the context. They do so without engaging in skilled probabilistic calculations of (even if these can be a part of reasoning). There is of course an element of anticipation in their attitude, but this does not include the methodical anticipation of all possible consequences associated with a decision. More often it involves a form of bounded rationality (to take up an idea of Herbert Simon), inscribed in routine processes, habits and customs that can be overthrown in extraordinary situations. Such situations demand parents to develop new norms and practices in order to adapt to these changes in context. In the case of RRI, this means that responsibility as “caring about” is used far beyond risk analysis alone. It requires social participants to demonstrate moral innovation and to adapt the norms that they suggest to the particular context with which they are presented, all the while considering the future in order to ensure the best possible development of the technologies or theories that they are helping to produce.

In a certain way, one could say that the ethics of care takes charge of the multiplicity of participants, the scope of the action and knowledge at work in the development of science and technology, and the pluralism of norms (the various value systems of the social participants), at work in RRI. Williams [WIL 08, p. 460], for example, mentions the fact that “responsibility represents the readiness to respond to a plurality of normative demands”. Here, we once again see an idea that was suggested in responsibility as responsiveness: a responsible (virtuous) development of innovation and research requires various demands to be contemplated – such as economical stakes, sanitary risks, political desires, sometimes social reticence, and conflicting evaluations of technology – in order to reach a pluralist form of compromise.

For RRI, another benefit of approaching responsibility in terms of care is that this perspective brings together moral theories that are traditionally opposed to one another, such as consequentialism and the ethics of virtue [REB 06a]. The idea of care indeed assumes that individuals will take the results of their actions into account when making judgments, but also that they will have particular relationship with the other, which will generate a tendency to care about them. Many ethicists thus formulate responsibility as care in ways that are more open to analytically concurrent theories (see Chapter 1). In this way, responsibility as care seems to take on a final form of moral pluralism: to apply the ethics of care to the context of RRI allows epistemic and normative multiplicity, which characterizes modern societies, to immediately be taken into account.

Finally, compared with the negative interpretations of responsibility, responsibility as care relies upon a richer and more realistic moral understanding of the individual: “he or she is not only gifted with maximizing economical rationality (internalization of the risk of repercussions, for example) but also reveals a moral sensibility that can be implemented within the framework of innovation and research”.

However, this perspective, as enlightening as it may be within RRI, is not exempt from criticism. We shall analyze two of these criticisms, which are intimately linked¹²: the first focuses on the paternalistic risk carried by this type of approach; the second concerns the way normative proposals are justified when defining standards for what is good and virtuous.

The first type of criticism of care ethics that is frequently put forward highlights the paternalist aspect of its attempts to define the rules of goodness that individuals are expected to follow. In response to this attack, philosophers of care recall the phenomenological roots of their approach and insist that in reality, to give appropriate care to a vulnerable individual (a child, a sick person, etc.) or even to a technology in development, presupposes a delicate balance between virtue, good intentions, ability to act or make decisions and political entitlement, which is intimately linked to the particular situation that needs to be resolved. This way of defining the criteria for good in relation to a changing context protects the understandings of responsibility as virtue from preconceived and dogmatic perspectives on the common good. As written by Joan Tronto [TRO 93, p. 203.]:

“Since care is a practice, nothing guarantees that the moral problems indicated here will be solved. We cannot call upon any universal principal that automatically ensures that care will be liberated from localism, from paternalism and from privilege from the moment people and society commit themselves to caring. But the absence of such a solution only serves to highlight the fact that care, because it is a practice, is contextualized and localized¹³”

The second type of criticism is linked to the first and is based on the way in which norms for virtuous approaches or behaviors are determined within the framework of modern pluralist societies, where there is not necessarily a consensus for ethical values or theories.

We saw in Chapter 2 that the literature on RRI unanimously defended a collective construction of the norms that determine practices in innovation and research, through dialog, through participation or, better still, through deliberation. We have nonetheless noticed that, for the moment, participation and deliberation were theoretically underdeveloped in the literature. One constructivist understanding of responsibility as care (if this exists) would be to face up to similar difficulties: how can we ensure that a collective process of elaboration of RRI norms will ultimately lead to virtuous developments in innovation and research?

Though this question is not answered in a precise manner by those who are in favor of understanding responsibility as care, we can still follow the path of the ethics of care: standards for good are linked to the context and are born from individual wisdom. This is close to Aristotelian phronesis that identifies these standards and puts them into practice. It seems, therefore, that RRI standards do not so much arise from a compromise obtained through dialog, but rather from participant disposition to act in a virtuous manner; a disposition that must be favored and nurtured through education and adequate institutional devices. A set of traditional recommendations therefore enters into this framework, promoting the training of scientists in ethical thinking, the creation of financing facilities for research and innovation that can favor good practices, and, more generally, the training of citizens on the themes of science and society ([DOU 03], for example).

4.2.3.2. The virtue of responsibility as an obligation to be held accountable (4b)

Another interpretation of responsibility as virtue, which is less current than the previous one, rests on a form of injunction to report one’s actions. We have seen that responsibility as accountability can refer to two different approaches. The passive approach to this interpretation was described in Chapter 3. This approach centers on the relationships that link a forum to an agent and the obligations that this agent has toward a principal, in particular the obligation to justify and explain his or her actions or decisions. Such an approach is described with humor and irony by Paul Ricoeur, who writes of the attribution of responsibility:

“The metaphor of the account – put [the action], so to speak, on his account- ‘to take action in order speak on one’s account’ – is extraordinarily interesting. It is not at all external to the judgement of imputation […] suggesting the idea of a kind of moral bookkeeping of merits and demerits, as in a double-entry: receipts and expenses, credit and debit, with an eye to a sort of positive or negative balance – the last offspring of this metaphor must be the very readable and physical demerit book all French drivers carry! In turn, this strange accounting suggests the idea of a kind of moral dossier, or record, as one say in English, a compendium for the inscription of debts and eventually of merits – here again our French police record is very close to the idea of this strange dossier. In this way, we move back to the semi-mythical figures of the great book of debts: the book of life and death. This metaphor of a balance book seems to underlie the apparently banal idea of being accountable for and the (apparently even more banal) idea of giving an account, in the sense of reporting, recounting, at the end a sort of reading of this strange summary dossier” [RIC 00, p. 14].

To this interpretation of the obligation to be held accountable as a calculation or a contractual demand, Bovens [BOV 98, BOV 10] adds a second, positive one. This is based on active involvement by the agent, who is capable of modifying his or her actions according to the imperatives expressed by an authorized representative or a principal ([see also [GRU 10]). From this view of accountability as virtue, what carries importance is related to the active performance of agents when considering the needs of other stakeholders and engaging in a learning process about dialog. This is once again a case of explaining and justifying one’s actions and decisions, but this time in a way that allows us to modify them according to those around us, and to act accordingly. Here, the mutual learning process between the different people involved overrides the mechanism of control and repercussions that was presupposed in the passive interpretation of accountability. Such a process of adaptation makes activities more sustainable and improves the efficiency of the decision-making system. It also aims to deploy appropriate forms of governance, underpinned by norms. It must then be ensured that the various organizations understand and follow these norms properly, while giving participants a margin of interpretation so that they can adjust or modify them if necessary. This interpretation of responsibility as an obligation to be held accountable therefore places emphasis on the positive abilities of individuals (principal and agent) in adapting to one another or in allowing such adaptation, rather than on a contractual obligation motivated solely by the fear of sanctions.