Responsibility and justification: A phenomenological investigation into the role of responsibility in scientific theories and methods

Application summary

In my thesis, I develop a new account of responsibility by conducting an investigation of the conceptualization of responsibility within the field of phenomenology. I provide a detailed theoretical research on the concept of responsibility as well as a profound understanding of how this concept concerns the special sciences, the humanities and our societies. Thus, I contribute in the public discussions about artificial intelligence, medicine or political sciences which are concerned with the question of who takes the responsibility for scientific research. My hypothesis is that we take responsibility in the process of justifying our methods and that questions concerning responsibility do not solely arise on an ethical or moral level. If we want to justify our methods, we have to demonstrate why the method in question is the right one for its purpose and appropriate to its subject matter. My argument builds from phenomenology and I examine Edmund Husserl’s radical critique of the sciences and humanities in order to explain the interrelation of responsibility and justification. Husserl’s philosophy offers detailed and specific analyses of the interrelations of the methods, the presuppositions and the task of researchers who are able to reflect on their work and their methodological achievements. Modern societies need the sciences and their results because they boost and enable economic and societal development in various ways. Until today there is no fundamental investigation on the basis of phenomenology which addresses the interrelation of theoretical justification in the sciences and the question of responsibility. My overall aim is to fill two gaps in the current research field of philosophy by performing a systematic explication of the concept of responsibility within phenomenology and to devise a missing account of responsibility in respect to theoretical justification by phenomenological methods that would also contribute to interdisciplinary debates.