Science, Technocracy, and Artificial Intelligence: An Ethical-Juridical Reflection Prompted by the Current Pandemic

Science Between Autonomy, Freedom And The Precautionary Principle: Definition Of The Survey Framework

We can find confirmation of this in what the 1963 Nobel Prizewinner for Physiology and Medicine, J. Eccles, wrote: “I accept all the discoveries and all the hypotheses well corroborated by science, considering them not as absolute truths, but as the maximum point of approach to the truth that has so far been attained. But […] there is an important residue not explained by science, and even beyond any future explanation by science” (Eccles, 1990, p. 18). Indeed, from Eccles's statements one can, with good reason, derive the conviction that the legislator, especially in the field of the repercussions of scientific discoveries on the life of man and of the human species as a whole, must act in compliance with the precautionary principle (Marini, 2004; Amato Mangiameli, 2021, pp. 60-61). This is in order to prevent the work of science from bringing negative consequences for humans, rather than benefits. In fact, to conceive a completely autonomous action for the scientist, in our opinion means conceiving an incomplete action: incomplete when compared to the undeniable complexity of human nature, considered in the totality of its dimensions (the biological, the instinctive, the relational, the metaphysical, etc.). The autonomy of the scientist, ethically and legally, as we will try to demonstrate in these pages, should, however, be limited when his research does not go towards the common good and effective progress for man, considered in the totality of its dimensions.