Logic, methodology and philosophy of science VIII proceedings of the eighth international congress of logic, methodology and philosophy of science, and philosophy of science proceedings) ( PDFDrive ) 83

64 P GARDENFORS new knowledge will inevitably lead to technology that can be misused if put in the wrong hands Thus knowledge is marked dangerous because it is believed to have dangerous practical consequences.’ The second type of danger is that certain knowledge is dangerous because of its mental consequences For example it may threaten the established society or some of its institutions or even the established view of humanity itself Thus some knowledge is thought to be counter-ideological or subversive and thus not desirable.* This distinction between two types of dangers is, admittedly, very rough Nevertheless, I believe that the distinction is clarifying when attempting to answer the question whether there is anything we should not want to know The next section will be devoted to a discussion of the problems of inevitable technology in relation to the freedom of scientific investigations Section 3, then, treats the problems of ideologically unwanted knowledge As will be clear, rather different considerations will be relevant for these two groups of problems On the basis of an analysis of some examples of allegedly undesirable knowledge, my conclusion is that there is no scientific knowledge that we should not want to have The final section presents a view on the goals of science, inspired by Aristotle, which supports this conclusion Before I start I want to emphasize that I am only concerned with possible restrictions on scientific knowledge itself It is not my aim to discuss restrictions on methods used by scientists for obtaining new knowledge I take it for granted that knowledge is not pursued at all costs, but there will be ethical and other restrictions on what can be done to human and animal subjects, on risky experiments, on the expenses of the research, etc However, I believe that the problems of potentially undesirable knowledge can and ought to be treated independently of such restrictions on scientific methods Another caveat is that I only want to discuss scientific knowledge It is quite a different issue to determine whether there are personal forms of knowledge that we not want to have For example, if a doctor discovers that I have a terminal illness, it does not seem obvious that he should tell me about it I have no exact definition of what constitutes scientific knowledge, but in this context it is sufficient to note that such knowledge is general and impersonal ’ Cf.GRAHAM (1979) on “inevitable technology” * Cf BALTIMORE (1979) on the “necessity of freedom”