Ethically Structured Processes

Introduction

The efficiency of the logics of human action, their ability to achieve defined goals, requires a close relationship to the possible. Without this relationship, they would not be effective. But this possibility can be either opened up to its perpetuation or blocked in a technical set of abstract conditions.

“Process” refers here to the viability of what is possible in each situation. This possibility is always already shared, opening up to an ethical¹ interaction between the actors involved in this situation². If this interaction is not ethical, it is because the logic at work has already deviated from the possible, where it was in its element and was therefore running smoothly. The elucidation of the intrinsically ethical structuring of certain processes is the main issue of this book.

“Responsibility”, as it will be understood here, takes the form of the structural link through which the freedoms of the actors are co-involved. Today, this responsibility must be exercised under conditions of uncertainty and unpredictability, largely linked to the gains in precision and efficiency of science and technology achieved through global processes of constant innovation. This increased precision, by the way in which it accounts for reality, masks its contingency. Desiring an ever stronger grip, it intensifies the contingency, and therefore the unpredictability, every time.

RRI (responsible research and innovation) is a powerful attempt to re-think, develop and articulate ...