TOK Essay Ethical Judgement

IB Theory of Knowledge Essay
May 2014 Prescribed Title no. 1
Ethical judgements limit the methods available in the production of knowledge in both the arts and the natural sciences. Discuss.
Word Count : 1127 Thuylinh Vu
Candidate number:

Ethical judgements limit the methods available in the production of knowledge in both the arts and the natural sciences. In the natural sciences, methods such as life threatening experiments on humans are banned due to the fact that people consider it unethical to kill other human beings for the sake of an experiment. Ethical restrictions also protect the human rights of many human test subjects. The downside of ethical restrictions is that it limits us from actually learning more about a specific topic in the natural sciences. Downsides of ethical restrictions also occur in the arts. Nudity and gore are usually left untouched when we talk about what is considered ethical in art, but a percentage of the world’s population would accept these two topics as a form of self­expression. If they are banned due to ethical judgement, this would limit the knowledge we learn from other individuals, and their way of expressing themselves. Even though there are limitations due to ethical judgements, it also helps to censor art that are deliberately vulgar.
Doing life threatening research on humans is considered unethical because human life is considered precious and valuable. Since we cannot perform life threatening experiments on humans, we end up doing it on animals such as rats and rabbits. This limits the knowledge we gain about humans, because the anatomy and physiology of humans are nowhere near close to rodents. The medication that we have today are tested on rodents first, then it is tested on humans as a final product, but sometimes this can be bad because there is the placebo effect. A placebo is a simulated treatment for a disease intended to deceive the recipient. When a patient receives a placebo, they can perceive themselves as getting better, also called the placebo effect. The placebo effect is unreliable and can actually be life threatening because the placebo has a high chance of not working and letting the recipient die a horrible death.

For example, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study that ran from 1932 to 1972 is notorious for being an unethical medical experiment. They put at risk two hundred fifty poor African
American men with Syphilis, when they chose to give them placebo treatment instead of the available cure which was Penicillin. By the end of the 40­year experiment, only seventy four out of two hundred fifty recipients survived the disease. Not only did more than 50% of the recipients die, but their wife and children also got infected with Congenital Syphilis. Restricting this method of gaining knowledge limits us from learning from our mistakes. How will we ever improve if we do not make mistakes? If this tragic event did not occur, we may have never realized that using placebos would have such a horrible outcome. On the other hand, ethical restrictions can help to protect human lives. The death of over one hundred people during the
Tuskegee Syphilis Study could have been avoided due to ethical restrictions, but no one was allowed to expose the course of the experiment during that time, which violates their human rights. In the arts, many methods of creating art is considered unethical because of its contents.
This limits us from learning from other individuals who want to get their point across.
Self­expression is in my opinion a very important way to gain knowledge from other people, because we not only learn about the other individual but we also reflect their opinions onto ourselves. Through various works of art, we gradually mold ourselves into who we are and that is all thanks to the self­expression that artists try to show in their work. For example, Piero
Manzoni’s Artist’s Shit is considered to be unethical by the majority of the people, but it can be seen as Manzoni’s way of expressing his thoughts about the relationship between art production and human production. Yet, this aspect of the work of art is rarely examined, due to the fact that

the work of art is made out of feces in a can. People can’t get over the fact that this method of producing knowledge in the arts is vulgar, therefore they can not see the deeper meaning within the work of art itself; restricting them from absorbing the artist’s self­expression.
Ethical judgements limits the methods available in the production of knowledge in the arts, but what is considered ethical in the arts? Usually when we talk about what is ethical, we talk about behaviour or actions made by humans. Since the work of art itself is inanimate and does not show human behaviour it can’t possibly be categorized as ethical or unethical. The artist’s behaviour during the process of creating the work of art can be judged by the ethics, but the work itself is left for us to decide whether it is good art or bad art, not ethical or unethical art.
For example, Sharon Old’s poems are relatively explicit in its contents, but does it make her work bad? Her poems are known for its accessibility and direct free verse style, making it as good as any other poet’s work of art. Then why is she in the line of fire when it comes to ethics in poetry? This is because of the image she is trying to portray in her poems are considered unethical. Poets strive to share their experiences and the idea that someone out there has felt what they have felt before. Therefore, Old’s poems can not be ethical or unethical, only Old’s intentions of what her poems are supposed to convey can be ethical or unethical.
In conclusion to this, ethical judgement that limits the methods in producing knowledge can have both a good effect and a bad effect. It can help protect the human rights of test subjects in the natural sciences, but also restricts us from gaining any further knowledge about a specific topic. Ethical judgement can limit what we learn about other individuals in the arts.
Self­expression is the idea that the artist is trying to convey to the audience, yet sometimes it can not reach its audience due to ethical restrictions. On the other hand, what is ethical art? Art can

not be categorized as ethical or unethical, because it is inanimate and ethics refer to the behaviour and actions of humans. Therefore this means only the artist can be considered ethical or unethical and the work of art is left for us to decide whether it is good art or bad art. All of this is generally one person’s point of view on things, so it would be safer to not only consider others opinions but also try to reflect on your opinions when reading more in depth about the ethical restrictions in both the arts and natural sciences.