Mikko M. Puumala

In this paper, we characterise the field of space research ethics and the moral and political landscape it operates on. To lay the groundwork for our ethical analysis, we begin by introducing the diverse ways space research is conducted in practice and by discussing ongoing changes in its operational environment. We note that space research is necessary to facilitate our modern way of life and is integral to green and digital transformation. Following that, we identify key space research ethical issues in different domains and suggest tentative elements that trigger the need for research to undergo ethical review, to forward discussion and debate. The difficulty is to find suitable guidelines that are defined clearly enough to be action-guiding but simultaneously broad enough to address the complexity and global nature of space research. In the long term, the most feasible approach may be to define a tailored set of research ethical guidelines for particular fields, particular space environments, and particular research goals. We further address how the collective and global nature of space activities adds additional layers of challenges regarding the research ethical responsibility of the scientific community. In this context, we suggest that research ethics is not only a set of specific moral codes developed as a professional ethic for researchers, but also an institutionalised way to guide and support research activities and the integrity of researchers to maintain trust within the research community and the society at large.

Plant ethics has its own set of questions, concepts, and philosophical assumptions, of which many are novel and call for original ways of thinking. This chapter focuses on how some common methods in philosophical theorizing, such as analogies and thought experiments, fare in the context of plant ethics. Based on plant ethics literature, we identify and examine two methodological strategies for plant ethics. The first strategy focuses on finding possible morally relevant similarities between plants and animals, including humans. Based on these similarities, familiar arguments from animal and traditional ethics can be extended to plant ethics. This can be called the extensionist strategy. Our focus will be on analogy argumentation and analysis. The second strategy focuses on highlighting an ontological division between plants and animals. According to this strategy, morally relevant properties are different for plants than they are for animals. This will be called the otherness strategy. Here our focus will be on conceptual analysis, and we will discuss a constructive and deconstructive approach.

The ethical, societal, and political issues of Mars settlement seem like very distant problems, both spatially and temporally. However, there is a certain urgency to these matters. Whatever humanity does in the coming decades will affect generations upon generations of future humans and other living beings, as well as their environments. The initial agreements about how resources are governed and what kind of regime is established can persist for a long time. There can be a “Founder Effect” in space. This engenders questions about where to begin. Are the primary goals scientific, political, or economic? Will they be realised through international cooperation, or as a private enterprise? Will the first steps be taken in a just manner and for the common good? A settlement can become “locked-in” to initial technological, economic, behavioural, or political solutions, or caught in path dependencies. Inertia can take hold. Moreover, the process of designing and planning Mars settlements can itself become locked in this way, burdened by problematic histories, colonialist ways of thinking about settlements, and problematic values. It may even be the case that humans are neither technologically nor socially ready to settle other worlds.

Climate change is to a large extent a collective action problem, but many believe that individual action is also required. But what if no individual contribution to climate change is necessary nor sufficient to cause climate change-induced harms? This issue is known as the problem of inconsequentialism. It is particularly problematic for act consequentialism because the theory does not seem to judge such inconsequential contributions negatively. In this paper, we apply Henry Sidgwick's idea of esoteric morality to climate change and assess whether what we call a climate esoteric morality could help to deal with the problem of inconsequentialism from an act consequentialist perspective. Consequentialists ought then to promote what we call nonconsequentialist faux principles; exaggerate existing consequentialist principles that pro tanto forbid contributing to climate change whenever strictly consequentialist principles fail to do so; and refrain from criticising nonconsequentialist principles that forbid contributing to climate change.

The on-going space settlement debate has raised questions whether it is possible to settle other planets, and if it was, is it something humans should do. The problem with this space ethical discussion is that it can easily become too vague. To avoid this problem, we suggest a framework for identifying relevant variables that affect the feasibility constraints and desirability factors of establishing space settlements. The variables we focus on include the settlement stage, scale and time frame. Based on the relevant literature, we take mission cost, survival, habitation, water, in situ resources for food, oxygen and fuel energy and dependence on Earth as feasibility constraints that are relevant for the framework. None of them are hard constraints, but rather soft feasibility constraints that make it difficult to establish a permanent human settlement on Mars in the near- to medium-term future. However, in the past, humanity has achieved goals that first seemed infeasible. To justify the costs and effort, the goal must be highly morally desirable. We discuss five different desirability factors that could help justify the effort but as each framework has unique feasibility constraints, not all of these factors are sufficient or necessary to justify this effort. We argue that some of the desirability factors prominent in space ethical literature are not sufficient or necessary in our framework, and thus, we conclude that the normative grounds for establishing a permanent Mars settlement in the foreseeable future are weak.

Cultural appropriation, also called cultural borrowing, has been the topic of much discussion in recent years. Roughly speaking, cultural appropriation happens when someone outside of a cultural or ethnic group takes or uses some object that is characteristic or in some way important to the group without the group’s permission. Individuals who find cultural appropriation unproblematic have often argued that if we express moral criticism of the use of traditional Sami outfits by non-Sami, then we are logically committed to criticize all kinds of habits that are clearly acceptable –such as using jeans, eating pizza or drinking tea. However, we will argue that in many cases that objection is problematic. We point out that if one social habit or practice is prohibited by existing social conventions but another is not, then there is a convention difference between the cases. The convention difference is in turn a morally relevant difference, or so we aim to show. We refer to “moderate conventionalism,” according to which existing social conventions are morally relevant facts that should be taken into account when choosing how to act, whatever the content of the conventions happens to be. The claim is analogous with the traditional view that laws have some moral relevance and binding force independent of their content. _Keywords:_ cultural appropriation, conventionalism, moderate conventionalism, convention difference