Ethically Structured Processes

6The Responsibility of a Meeting: China

Let us try to further clarify the relevance of this challenging development for responsible research and innovation.

What has been said about defined conditions grasped in efficient logical articulations can be seen as a rigorous development of what is commonly and thoughtlessly referred to as a “framework” that allows responsible innovation [FIS 16].

The problem with such frameworks is their status. To say that such a framework is “abstract”, and therefore external to the situation under consideration, is to subject the action to a double duality.

The “descriptive” falls outside the “prescriptive” and is opposed to it, just as the “form” diverges from the “content” and faces it. As soon as there is an abstraction of logics with their conditions, i.e. the “frameworks” that are applied and pressed onto a situation, one finds oneself caught in a dual thought.

However, dualities block the process at work. The descriptive is external to the prescriptive and faces it. They cannot be confused. Form is opposed to content and is strictly distinct from it.

Efficiency is therefore placed outside of effectiveness and responsibility becomes problematic.

A responsible relationship with the enlisted “frameworks” requires a rethinking of their status, no longer as abstract, but as caught up in “processes” that give them effectiveness. This requires breaking down dual thinking in the two ways mentioned above.

The responsibility towards the effectiveness ...