Democratic Experimentation with Responsibility: A Pragmatist Approach to Responsible Research and Innovation

Abstract

Disruptive societal changes following from emerging science and technology have recently led to a growing interest in developing ethical frameworks. Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is such a framework that aims to improve the relationship between science and society. Now a decade after its conceptualization, it still seems to suffer from conceptual unclarity and lack of implementation. Since responsibility in research and innovation practice remains as important as ever, we propose to revive the normative potential of RRI by approaching it as a matter of collective democratic experimentation. To further develop this approach, we propose a pragmatist conceptualization inspired by John Dewey, his work on democracy as an ethical way of life and his attention to the contextual nature of responsibility. Furthermore, we show how his interest in social inquiring publics provides a particularly apt foothold from which to operationalize collective democratic experimentation with RRI. We will illustrate the utility of this approach, with specific attention to the social, experimental and public character of social inquiry, by connecting it to the recent call to use social labs methodology to experiment with RRI. From this we draw lessons for future collective democratic experimentation with responsibility in research and innovation practice.