Process, outcomes, virtues: the normative strategies of responsible research and innovation and the challenge of moral pluralism

ABSTRACT

The paper analyses the normative foundations of responsibility in the recent literature on responsible research and innovation (RRI). Firstly, it finds that RRI approaches invoke three main types of moral reasoning to define responsibility corresponding to key philosophical traditions: proceduralism, consequentialism and virtue ethics. The paper analyses how RRI approaches differ in the kind of elements they borrow from these three traditions. Secondly, the paper shows that this analytical reflection about the normative strategies followed by RRI approaches helps to better understand the tension existing between, on the one hand, the modern requirement of pluralism in democratic societies to allow for various value systems to influence the decision-making process and, on the other, the applicability of normative theories that demands specific and practical norms to be identified. The paper aims to show how each type of moral reasoning strategy used by most RRI approaches deals with this tension and how each attempts to resolve it.

KEYWORDS:

• Responsible research and innovation
• responsibility
• proceduralism
• outcome-oriented theory
• care ethics

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank all the members of the GREAT project and especially Bernard Reber and Philippe Goujon for their fruitful comments. I also would like to thank Richard Owen for his precious help as well as the two anonymous reviewers of the journal who provided challenging comments.

Notes on contributor

Sophie Pellé After completing her Ph.D. in philosophy of economics (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), the author has completed one post-doctoral position on the ethics of nanotechnology (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) and is now at Sciences Po (CEVIPOF) and works for the EU funded FP7 project GREAT (Governance of Responsible Innovation) as a post-doctoral fellow.

Notes

1. I did not, however, search for any specific dimensions of innovation in relation with responsibility. For treatments of this subject see for instance Pavie, Scholten and Carthy (2014), Pavie and Egal (2014), Ziegler (2015), Blok and Lemmens (2015) and Pellé (forthcoming-a).

2. Including members of FP7 EU funded projects on RRI and scholars deemed relevant from the science & technology studies (STS) community.

3. Schroeder and Ladikas (2015) and Ziegler (2015) adopt a principled view where the Rawlsian difference principle should help allocate funds for R&I and regulate the development of innovation.

4. In the tradition of Kant’s theory, a formalist approach only provides a formal rule to elaborate norms without any reference to content or context. But procedural rules in RRI theories are often substantive and prescribe specific content that procedures should achieve.

5. Which draws on four “p’s”: product, process, purpose and people

6. See Blok and Lemmens (2015), Pavie, Scholten and Carthy (2014), Pellé and Reber (2015, 2016) for a critical reflection about transparency.

7. At early stages of technology, low information prevents from providing relevant assessments and forecasts, while when the technology is more mature, better information is available but the possibility of influencing technological design and pathway of development has been reduced (Collingridge 1980).

8. Both authors differ though, among other points, on their interpretation of the substantive dimension.

9. Cf. EU funded GREAT project. http://www.great-project.eu/

10. See Schroeder and Ladikas (2015) for elements of comparison between the European 6 pillars and the US “broader impacts”.

11. Although the process through which the Treaty has been approved, mostly without the recourse to referendum and after the rejection of the European Constitution by several national referendums, is subject to criticism.

12. Article 2 of the Treaty of Lisbon (2007).

13. Crowd sourcing designates new ways for individuals or companies to obtain needed services, ideas or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, usually an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers. For suggestions about its application to responsible innovation, see Winickoff, Jamal, and Anderson 2016).

14. And assuming that members of society are “reasonable” citizens.

15. But the comparison is only a limited one, since RRI approaches do not rest on a complex structure such as Rawls’ theory.

16. Interpreted as blameworthiness or liability (Pellé and Reber 2016)

17. Even if the concept of need has to be critically reinterpreted in the case of R&I practices (Pavie 2014; Pellé forthcoming-a, forthcoming-b).

18. This is a broad definition of the idea of care. See Groves (2014), Engster (2007) or Pellé (forthcoming-a, forthcoming-b), among others, for a discussion on various definitions and aspects of these definitions.

19. “Nussbaum (1993, 2000, 2006) has constantly argued in favour of an approach of justice based on the capabilities that human beings are able to exercise. She defends a list of basic capabilities that allows for human flourishing in a way that is supposed to transcend cultural and historical variations.”

Additional information

Funding

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Commission's or Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) [grant number 321480] (project GREAT).