Ethical consciousness in bioengineering

The role of ordinary language in expressing personal views and attitudes is a familiar one. Ordinary language can express attitudes, social demands or expectations, and moral judgments. In all these cases ordinary language has what I call practical import. Even the use of ordinary language to provide characterizations of people and interpretations of social situations can express attitudes and can imply moral judgments. Practical import is to be contrasted with theoretical import, which is mainly focused on facts and beliefs about facts. In some ways a scientific and professional education threatens to eliminate the connections between language and personal attitudes and between language and moral judgments, especially insofar as science aspires to be "detached" and morally neutral. Scientific ways of thinking and speaking tend to overlook the practical import of language and to concentrate on theoretical import alone. Professional codes of ethics and principles of ethical conduct can be helpful in counteracting this. But the general statements of codes, if they are not to degenerate into empty tautologies and pious truisms, must be understood in terms of particular cases. Finally, a brief look at some recent contributions of linguistics shows again the importance of attention to particulars. Ethical consciousness, having begun to arise even before professional education, is fostered among professionals through the use of professional codes of ethics, especially when these are understood in terms of paradigms and specific cases rather than merely general principles. The code requires professionals to use their powers of ethical judgment, not to surrender them.