God. Real. Right.

The last post on science touts the material benefits of science for societies which respect liberty. But because that argument makes some people think science should operate without restriction, this post deals with the moral value of science’s product: technology. (This post is a necessary excursion on the way to defining science, which is next.)
Scientists regularly lament the restrictions imposed on them by moral, religious, and other value-laden sects of society. A few years ago an ABC news analyst/physician complained that since scientists had given the McGaugheys the ability to conceive their septuplets, scientists should be the ones to decide whether selective abortion was necessary for the health of the children. (The McGaugheys are pro-life and were the focus of Christian pro-life public activity at the moment.) But her argument is based on a poor understanding of liberty.
It is impossible to respect liberty without restricting it. Maintaining liberty with rational consistency requires separating negative rights (good ones) from positive rights (artificial ones). Negative rights preserve the interests (particularly life, autonomy, and property) of individuals against the intrusive interests of others. In other words, negative rights keep a bully from taking a would-be-victim’s iPod. Positive rights, on the other hand, claim entitlement for those who currently are doing without something. In other words, the claim that a person is entitled to medical care is a positive right. Obviously, positive rights inherently lead to a violation of negative rights. A doctor has a right to work only if it is worthwhile to him, and even neglect work altogether if he no longer cares about income. To say a patient has a “right” to that doctor’s care obviously violates the doctor’s liberty. No system with positive rights can survive—it will devour itself because of the practical contradictions built into it.
The ABC analyst mentioned above confused scientists’ libertarian (negative) right to study and learn in whatever direction the empirical data takes them with the contradictory (positive) right to impose the product of their research or the values they associate with it on either their clients or the public. It may be correct that intellectual freedom is essential to valuable scientific progress—as the last post argues. But it is equally correct that moral constraint is essential to the implementation and application both of scientific research itself and of its products. Read the rest of this entry »