Whenever one makes a value statement, there is some sort of claim of knowledge that is being made. This claim can be factual, like in science, or it can be emotional, such as ethics. Science is an area of knowledge that includes reference to things that exist in the real world and can be provable. Ethics, however, is a field in which people tend towards a feeling that makes them behave in one way or another.
We come to our knowledge claims via very different routes in science or in ethics. In science, we use our logic, and our factual knowledge. In ethics, we use our reason, and our emotional impulses. The differences between science and ethics are many, but there are points of intersection at which we must consider the value of scientific knowledge sometimes with ethical knowledge compromises.
Therefore, in response to the assertion that it is only knowledge produced with difficulty that we value, there is no agreement here. In fact, there are instances that prove that knowledge which is produced with great difficulty is often valued less for the difficulty with which it was acquired. When the term difficulty is used, it means the amount of collaborative effort that it takes to produce the knowledge. When we assess the difficulty of our knowledge claims, we usually are not assessing the methodology that is behind them. In science, we take our knowledge of gravity pretty much for granted. Certainly, there have been disagreements about what gravity is, but not over the fact that it exists.
Therefore, is a scientific fact, such as gravity, different from facts in ethics because ethical facts are not discovered like scientific facts? The argument herein is that yes, ethical facts are valued for the difficulty that it takes to get to produce claims of knowledge, because the claim exists only because of the difficulty by which it is made. The overall conclusion that is argued here is that difficulty is not why we value knowledge. To sum up this perspective: Ethical claims of knowledge are valued based on their difficulty, but scientific knowledge is not valued based on difficulty in producing it.
Ethical knowledge is not necessarily universal. The laws of gravity apply regardless of what culture or environment that one is in. But in ethics, there are relative differences in the way that ethical knowledge is asserted. The evidence of ethical disagreement happens daily in our multicultural world. Therefore, the way that we arrive at ethical knowledge is through practice, and through interaction with the culture that frames the ethical reference. For example, the ethical knowledge of learning not to lie can be highly valued by the individual who goes through a difficult process of learning the lesson. Through telling lies, the individual learns. However, we can also learn costly ethical knowledge on a social scale. For example, In Nazi Germany, or through the institution of slavery, we have learned racial superiority is ethically repulsive. We value this knowledge, for when it is forgotten, the person who forgets is held responsible for their transgression, and looked upon as a heathen. Therefore, this type of ethical knowledge, that racism is bad, has been learned with great difficulty. The claims against racism are ethical knowledge claims that are valued for the difficulty that has produced them.
On the other hand, in science, the argument that is supported here is that claims of science are not valued for the difficulty producing the knowledge. This is because scientific knowledge is more like a discovery, than a creation of knowledge. Gravity exists whether we name it or not, so our knowledge of it is secondary to the fact that it indeed exists: “Naturally, human beings have had a basic understanding of this force since time immemorial… our modern understanding of gravity… owed to one man who deciphered its properties and how it governs all things great and small – Sir Isaac Newton” (Williams). What this means is that our claims of knowledge about the way that gravity behaves, are what Sir Isaac Newton produced, with some degree of difficulty, but that was in the 17th century. We do not value the difficulty with which Newton arrived at his description of gravity in order to value the knowledge of how gravity works today.
But this is not the case when it comes to ethical knowledge. Ethical knowledge is learned through hard experiences, and it is valued for the difficulty which produced it. That is why the advice of our elders is valuable to us, that way we do not repeat their same mistakes. Treatment of other is different in each corner of the world, but there are universal ethical norms that we have discovered through trial and error. These trials should never be repeated, and therefore, we value what we have learned through our worldly experiences in history when we regard ethical claims. We value these claims of knowledge for their inherent history, for now we understand that racial superiority is a claim that is devoid of value.
In our modern era of science and technology, there are times when science and technology have progressed at the expense of ethics. The best example of this would be the scientific knowledge that was produced in the Nazi camps under the guise of racial superiority. These experiments produced scientific knowledge claims, and some of them are applicable to medicine today. However, because of the difficulty associated with the production of the knowledge formed at the expense of the Jewish prisoners in Nazi Germany, the scientific knowledge is devalued, because the ethical claims are valued. In order to elaborate on this perspective, the scientific community was recently dismayed when data from the hypothermia experiments in Nazi Germany were used in order to bolster modern conclusions (Bogod).
The scientific community has reached a consensus that he knowledge, even if scientifically valid, is so far extremely invalid ethically that it would be better to not have the knowledge at all: “…while suppression of the data would result in a specific and localized loss of information…this loss, it seems, would be less important than the far reaching moral loss to medicine if the data were to be published” (Bogod). Thus, completely devaluing claims of knowledge based on the fact that they were produced with great difficulty. Now, our future has similar ethical/scientific barriers to creating knowledge, do we clone, develop enhanced pathogens, create robots…(Reilly Center). Questions that we have to ask include whether we value scientific advancements over ethical preservation (Reilly Center).
Our future is wrought with questions that need answers. Claims of knowledge in the sciences are valued not because of the process by which they were discovered, but rather for their applicability. However, in extreme cases, such as the case involving Nazi experimentation, there are times when any degree of knowledge is devoid of any value because of the difficult process by which it was obtained. Therefore, in order to assess the extent that the statement that we value only knowledge produced with great difficulty, the statement is false. In fact, sometimes we completely devalue knowledge because of the difficulty with which it took to produce it.
