Now there are types of art that aim to educated the views which could be interoperated as being for the greater good. The concepts of cubism and surrealism, allows for individual interpretation of everyday objects, however one could argue that it is teaching false information to the viewer. To what extent does distortion of information acceptable? When talking about ethical responsibility, there should be no question as to if distortion is acceptable, however it is acceptable in the arts.
As well as there being ethical implications in the natural sciences and the arts, there are also going to be ethical implications in the human sciences. Experiments such as the Stanford prison experiment, and the Little Albert experiment both have moral and ethical implications yet they were still conducted. When is ethical responsibility acceptably neglected in order to obtain certain knowledge? Taking the Stanford prison experiment as an example, the lack of distance between the psychologist and his experiment, caused there to be a mix up in the ethical morality of the experiment.
The Distance should have provided the psychologist with the ability to see what the prisoners and the prison guards where actually doing and act accordingly, yet seen from the point of utilitarianism, the suffering that a small groups of people had to endure was for the greater good of the human population and the academic world. This experiment also falls under the Deontological Theories, which mainly has to do with following the set rules. On the contrary the participants of the Stanford Experiment did not break any rules specific to the experiment, however the experiment as a whole crossed a multitude of other morals.
Another example of ethical responsibility, in a more applicable situation, take an innocent bystander who just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, can either chose to testify as witness, or not. This brings up the question of: can a person become a victim of knowledge? And can knowledge be a burden? In the case of a witness, both of the Ethical theories mentioned previously apply, however the choice of which to follow is in the individuals’ own hands.
The examples given before are not so much used in every day life. An example that relates closely to students such as me, is when taking a test do you allow a friend to copy off of your test, or do you cover you paper so that you are the only one that can see your answers? It is a question of which ethical theory the individual chooses (as stated before) do you help a friend and run the risk of getting caught by the teacher, or do you leave your friend to try and figure it out by him or her self, and run the risk of them failing?
From the claims and counterclaims that have been looked at through out the essay. It is clear that it depends on two things; the individual, and the situation presented. To answer the question: how can we determine when ethical responsibility affects the ability to obtain knowledge? We must keep in mind that it is individualized yet there may be certain social expectations in specific situations.
