Introduction

L'ethique [.] demeure problématique, c'est-à-dire fait problème qui donne à penser.

(Ethics [.] remains problematic, i.e. a problem which needs to be thought about)

Kostas Axelos

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is a notion that can represent a great opportunity for the future of Europe, because it is meant to merge technical and economic imperatives with societal needs and desires. The aim is to generate not only an institutional framework, but also a proliferation of regulated practices to increment European well-being. However, it is still unclear how to understand this task given the multiple conceptual perspectives and several practical obstacles that such a wide notion implies.

If, on the one hand, responsibility is an ambiguous term, paving the way to different and sometimes conflicting interpretations, on the other hand, research and innovation appear to be imperatives that could be committed only to technical regulations and need as much freedom as possible. Accordingly, RRI appears as a container embedding conflicting perspectives for which the solution is at least puzzling.

If it is difficult to provide an objective and shared understanding of what RRI should be, its prescriptive side. It is possible, however, to describe RRI as the tool through which the political rationality of our time is exemplified and developed, and therefore what it is supposed to be.

However, this last statement is also far from being clear in its features.

At the heart of the notion of RRI lies the more radical problem of the relation between science and society. Far from being a new issue, this conflict has been ongoing for the last few decades in different shapes and forms.

Among the different problems that this relation has produced, we can define at least two disciplinary areas that have tried to solve them according to specific logics. Nevertheless, their common methodology is to refer to an external "tool" in order to regulate the "debate".

A first dimension can be detected in the epistemic trust that scientific knowledge is neutral and objective. According to this perspective, the problems arising from research and innovation are due to some form of ignorance that can be easily overcome by means of scientific education. The consequences of an innovation or, in general, of research can be defined in advance if a valid methodology is adopted. Besides, all concerns about safety, in a broad sense, will be protected by laws and regulations, which all scientists and entrepreneurs must follow.

However, this perspective does not appear to be able to solve what have been call epistemic conflicts [VON 93]. Scientific points of view regarding the future outcomes of a technology have proven to be conflicting, generating an epistemic tangle from which we cannot get out via epistemic means. Moreover, technologies, and especially innovations, have a strong societal target, meaning that they will be applied or used in a context that is not limited to a research laboratory. Thus, science "objectivity" could be used by policy-makers, or specific subjects, as a justification for personal reasons [VON 93, PES 03].

A second approach in trying to solve the problem stands on a moral level. In fact, here the solutions proposed follow not a scientific path but a moral one. If research and innovation have a societal impact and, if epistemically speaking, we cannot reach a shared perspective, then we need to find other ways of assessing potential outcomes. Here, the proposed solution is to assume a moral perspective that could drive the process in deciding what is good and what is bad. However, this approach generates two kinds of problems. The first one is that moral perspectives are not singular, and most of the time not even stable regarding science in its general sense. Morality, although it could have the same syntactic sense, finds several different semantic understandings. The plurality of perspectives generates moral clashes that are even stronger than the epistemic ones. Thus, the criterion according to which decision should be taken needs to be found in an external reference on which all the subjects concerned could possibly agree. Such a criterion are often identified in the recourse to reason and the establishment of a corresponding procedure. If concerned agents deliberate and decide according to a set of rules defined by a rational morality, then the result should be a stable and shared one. There are several variations of an approach that basically rely on Kant's Critique of Practical Reason [KAN 97]. This strategy has the great merit of looking for an external reference in order to reach an agreement on problematic issues. However, this perspective has turned out not to be necessarily successful. The second problem in fact, generated at a moral level, is that if it is adopted as a purely rational procedure for solving issues, we might reach a justification but we could be missing the actual "agreement" by all agents. The reference to reason prescinds from subjective perspectives exactly by taking into account the objective side of subjectivity. In other words, reason is assumed to have this double nature of being present in every agent but not based on specific and relative aspects. In this way, the debate shifts to a purely objective side. However, this necessary "blindness" to aspects "other" than reason could generate a personal detachment from the results of what reason has established. Research and innovation amplify this possibility because their outcomes could provoke a strong impact on people's lives. As shown by Gunther [GUN 98], Ferry [FER 02] and many others, there is an enormous distance between the justification of a norm and its application. The advantage of a morally rational perspective, like the one embedded in discourse theory [HAB 98], is to abstract from irrational and unjustifiable contributions to the decision-making process. However, this abstractness also represents its deepest limit.

These kinds of approaches have the great merit of taking into account a transcendental reference that could serve as a tool for generating concerted norms and rules. The mistake lies, according to my perspective, in appointing an ontological primacy to this transcendental reference, which it cannot assume in reality. In other words, reason can and should be used as a tool for resolving social issues, but when it is assumed to be also the actual basin where all values, desires and interests should be comprised. We then assist to a sort of short circuit. The fact that agents should follow reasonable ways for fulfilling their life expectations does not mean that their lives are exhausted by reason. The logical mistake is generated by the fact that reason is made the only reference for achieving goals and objectives. To put it in another way, if reason is conceived as our aim, and not just as a tool by which we can define our aims, all what falls out of reason cannot be accepted [FER 02, WILa 84, LEN 03, HON 91, HON 14a].

However, if the recourse to reason generates several theoretical and practical difficulties, there is still the need to find an external reference on which to base debates. If reason as a transcendental value should be rejected, we should not throw the baby out with the bath water. If reason cannot be itself the aim of a debate, it can and must be the tool by which to generate one's aims, desires and preferences in order to overcome social clashes.

Nevertheless, we are still left with the question of the reference by which we can hope to develop a common solution to plural perspectives.

I believe that the reason for which science, and R&I in our update language, has started to undergo a general mistrust by the general public is because at a certain point it has been perceived and understood as a threat to one's freedom. I believe that all the different protests as well as the reasons provided for assuming a position in those debates were all referring, implicitly or explicitly, to the necessity of guaranteeing freedom to individuals.

I believe this to be true on two different, but related, levels.

A first level is the fact that potential negative outcomes could endanger people's lives or the way they would eventually decide how to live their lives. If the first set of issues is detectable in all those consequences connected to health or security areas, the second one is identifiable with products or processes that will predefine how people are going to manage their private relations. In this second sense, we can easily find in privacy issues or, for instance, two of the most controversial aspects.

However a second level refers to a perceived threat on one's freedom and concerns the way in which "governance" measures are put in place in order to decide about people's freedom. At this stage, the opposition raises questions with regard to the liberty that agents are given to decide about their future. In other words, the decisions regarding what is going to implement people's life are made without taking into account people themselves.

These two levels are so strictly connected that, according to my perspective, they have caused, and still do today, a general concern with regard to research and innovation.

This perspective could also be seen as valid, if we consider again the reference to reason that I have made above. It is not sufficient that certain products or processes are rationally justified in order for them to be accepted, because they could still represent a...