Knowledge and Society
Responsibility
What a knower owes as a result of knowing, or of being in a position to know. It covers obligations in producing knowledge, in passing it on accurately, and in acting or refusing to act on it, including the responsibility taken on by choosing not to look.
Who controls knowledge and its ethical weight. These concepts ask who decides what counts, who benefits, and what knowing something obliges you to do.
Situations that raise responsibility
All 16 situationsReal cases a class can argue about, where this concept is what is actually at stake.
- When a government doubted the virusAfrica
- Counting Bhopal's victimsIndia
- Evacuating a million people on a forecastIndia
- Bones as witnessesLatin America
- The cloning papers that unravelledEast Asia
- Was this flood climate change?South Asia
- The right to ask the state what it knowsIndia
- A nationwide experiment with no pilotSouth Asia