Asked my roommate P during lunch if he’d do weapons research as a scientist. After he replied, I explained that I find weapons research immoral and not justified as a scientific pursuit. Flash forward to three hours later, having lost a planned afternoon of video games, fun, and napping to a massive, all-consuming debate on the nature of tools and scientific responsibility. The problem is more or less that P rejects my argument that weapons are inherently harmful, and therefore not a valid pursuit for morally conscious scientists. What P maintains is that weapons are fundamentally no different than any other type of tool, having no intrinsic moral value. Instead, claims P, the only way one can judge the worth of a scientific discovery is by the intention attached to it, which only depends on what it ends up being used for. If the scientist designs a weapon, for example, an atom bomb, with the intention that it will be used to end a war before more people are killed, then the net outcome of his research, as far as he is concerned, is positive.

I have to say that I don’t buy this argument. What about the long-term consequences of the discovery? Can anyone look at the state of the post-atom bomb world and say unequivocally that overall, it has changed for the better? Through a little of libertarian zealotry, sheer stubbornness, and a LOT of classic Portuguese charm, P made the following tenable claims:

1. No tool is ever “inherently” harmful. The fact that we call certain things weapons and not others is an arbitrary distinction imposed on what is simply a continuum of different functional characteristics. It is even more meaningless to classify tools as “right” or “wrong” because even a tool generally considered to be “harmful” may be used for, and indeed may have even been designed for, doing a lot of good.
2. Deliberately ending human life is justifiable if the outcome is known to save even more human lives beyond a reasonable measure of doubt. As per point (1), consider the use of the atom bomb in ending WWII when Japan promised complete and bitter bloodshed before admitting defeat. Also, when an innocent civilian shoots an aggressor in self-defense. (Yes, we’ve had arguments about gun control, too.)
3. People have a fundamental right to life, and thus to protect themselves, and weapons are morally justified as a deterrent to immoral conduct by others. A scientist should, and indeed, must, produce weapons for the precise reason that his safety and that of his society are threatened by other people’s and societies’ pursuit of the same goal.

Here are my replies:

1. It is a fallacy to consider that the nature of a tool does not color the intentions of one who is using it. I’ll accept that we’ll always have angry murderous people in the world. But 100 angry murderous people with nothing but kitchen knives are apt to do less damage than 100 angry murderous people with nuclear weapons. Are the two groups different people? No, only the tools at their disposal are different. Naturally, P disagrees.
2. It may simply be a matter of faith that I don’t consider this type of reasoning to be acceptable. Only in extreme or idealized situations does this point even apply. On a matter of principle or in ambiguous historical examples like the Manhattan Project, how is it possible to say what the outcome should or will be? Especially when human life is concerned, we should always err on the side of less loss of life.
3. This point is sticky, to say the least. I can relate the generic liberal lament at the futility and unsustainability of deterrent policies, but this does not strike at the heart of the question. P is suggesting a sort of Prisoner’s Dilemma model for conducting scientific activity, but an imperfect one. The modern scientist should be morally conscious, not a machine operating under the rules of rational choice. Unfortunately, this gives us no insight into why, let alone how to change the fact that societies tend to operate more on the basis of self-interest and realpolitik, than on idealized moral systems.

To me, it seems that since the fundamental purpose of weapons is to kill, there can be no justification for their improvement and continuous reinvention. It is one thing to participate in basic research to uncover results that might be used for military ends. It is quite another to purposefully design more efficient methods of ending human life. At this point in the debate I have become quite impassioned, and in fact would have been ready to slam my fist down and walk away on moral high ground, had it not been for the fact that P had a point.

Our scientific and political leaders aren’t taught Kantian ethics, nor would they apply it much even if they had been. That I had to link to Wikipedia just now makes me living proof of this fact. At least inasmuch as shortsighted rationalism tends to dominate public policy today, nobody would realistically expect scientists or governments to abandon weapons research. Thus, should we consider it inevitable that advancements in improving human life be accompanied also by exceedingly powerful ways of destroying it? It seems trite to appeal to some sort of universal balancing act to explain the existence (and continuing use) of bioweapons as well as penicillin, ICBM’s as well as power plants.

Perhaps with enough time, we will evolve the necessary faculties of reason and foresight that our technological creations demand. A Kennedy School of Government professor has some interesting, if not altogether novel, ideas about this.