an enticing overlap if not partnership.
As just suggested, a secular astroethics of responsibility is likely to seek some level of grounding in one or another form of naturalism. The ethicist will ask nature to provide foundational insights for human valuing. This method risks committing the naturalistic fallacy—that is, drawing a moral “ought” out of an already existing “is.” Yet, without a transcendent grounding in the divine, nature is about all that is left to undergird an ethical vision.
Kelly Smith and Steven Dick, along with Hans Jonas, bring to the astroethical construction site a welcome supply of nature’s building materials. When we pour an aggregate of naturalistic gravel and theological stones into the concrete, the resulting foundation will be firm. “While theology can provide potentially universal principles such as compassion and dignity that will be useful in the context of astroethics, the problematic naturalistic fallacy should not stand in the way of secular ethics playing an important and perhaps predominant role” [2.26]. In short, theological and secular ethicists should link arms in constructing a superstructure of quandaries that lead to fitting moral responses.
2.2.3 Third Foundational Question: What Should We Do?
2.2.3.1 From Quandary to Responsibility
What should we do? We have already asked: Who are we? And we asked: What do we value? Now, to answer this third question—What should we do?—we draw on a pair of concepts: quandary and responsibility. No doubt communities and traditions find themselves frequently confronted with a quandary accompanied by a sense of responsibility. Such communities must work through the quandary by drawing practical applications out of their fundamental ethical orientation. Perhaps we can build on this common phenomenon as a foundation for multicultural ethics. We will call it the “Quandary-Responsibility method” within an Astroethics of Responsibility.
First, to demonstrate, today we are confronted by a quandary: How should we think ethically about the prospect of sharing the cosmos with space neighbors? Roman Catholic ethicist Charles Curran provides a framework. “Quandary ethics deal with concrete, objective human situations. In addition, it is here that human reason, science, and human experience predominate” [2.22]. This quandary regarding space exploration and ETI is not religion-specific. It does not begin with dogma and then seek application; rather, it begins with an astroethical question and then surfs the tradition for a helpful answer.
Second, we approach the quandary with a sense of moral responsibility. As the etymology of the Latin, respondere, meaning to answer, suggests, responsibility ethics answers questions raised by our changing situation [2.37]. Responding or answering belongs to the “primordial experience of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition: a call from God that human beings accept or reject” [2.50]. In the present discussion, what calls to us for a response or answer is the quandary posed by new space knowledge.
The Quandary-Responsibility method provides a keeled river raft to navigate the rapids, a stable boat to ride the rushing whitewater of science, technology, and social change. When the quandary is prompted by a situation that lies beyond Earth and more than likely will affect our entire planet, then perhaps we need to think of a single planetary moral agent. It is our global community that should be morally responsive and responsible. To work with the notion of responsibility for earthlings and to work with the idea of a shared commons in space, we will need to commit ourselves to a vision of universality. The universe requires universality.
2.2.3.2 From Space Sanctuary to Galactic Commons
Earlier we introduced Arnould’s proposal to treat outer space as a sanctuary; and we introduced the Roman Catholic notion of the common good. In extending these ideas [2.66] we ask: Is it fitting to think of circumterrestrial space as a commons, as belonging to us all and not to any person or nation in particular? [2.62]. Boston University theologian John Hart would answer in the affirmative. “The sacred cosmic commons is a communion of commonses cosmically interrelated and integrated. It is stardust become spirit; it is atoms become life and thought, all in the presence of a transcendent-immanent Being-Becoming, creating Spirit” [2.33].
Let’s return for a moment to what the United Nations has said. “The exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development, and shall be the province of all mankind” [2.85]. This has come to be known as the Common Heritage of Mankind Principle or CHP. The principle “confers on a region the designation of domino util or beneficial domain that should be legally defined as a res communis humanitatis, a common heritage that is not owned by any nation, but from which all nations may garner profits and benefits” [2.71]. Rather than national interests, the UN works with planetary interests. What about the interests of extraterrestrials?
Hart lifts up for us the ethical norm of a cosmic commons which takes into account the interest of the extraterrestrials.
“The cosmic commons is the spatial and local context of interactions among corporeal members of integral being who are striving to meet their material, spiritual, social, and aesthetic needs, and to satisfy their wants….The cosmic commons includes the aggregate of goods which, beyond their intrinsic value, have instrumental value in universe dynamics or as providers for the well-being of biotic existence. In the cosmic commons, goods that will eventually be accessible on the moon, asteroids, meteors, or other planets should prove useful to humankind, to other intelligent life, and to biokind collectively” [2.32].
Might Hart’s notion of a cosmic commons help us move forward from quandary to responsibility? Yes.
Perhaps some elements of the Roman Catholic concept of the “common good” could bleed over into our concept of the cosmic commons. “The common good as sum of the goods possessed by many and directed toward the utility of individuals,” writes Sergio Bastianel, “will be the common reaching out to realize a way of living together that can be accurately called communion” [2.6]. Or, the common good “indicates an ultimate goal of society, its utopia, in such a way that the intermediate aims will be critically evaluated in their being conformed toward such an aim of communion” [2.6]. For the near future, the commons will be shared by all of us who live on planet Earth. Perhaps in the more distant future, after we will have encountered extraterrestrial life and incorporated that life into our commons, the community of moral discernment will broaden. In short, our ethical vision directs our gaze toward a future communion shared by earthlings and spacelings.
Hart is not alone in proffering the idea of a cosmic commons as an ethical category. Like Hart and Dick, Mark Lupisella at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center proposes a “cosmocentric ethic,” which he contends “may be helpful in sorting through issues regarding the moral considerability of primitive extraterrestrial life as well as other ethical issues that will confront humanity as we move into the solar system and beyond” [2.42].
Arnould uses the term “Greater Earth” to communicate the same basic notion, although perhaps more limited in space. “Greater Earth defines the area, the space territory that surrounds the Earth and where most future space activities could take place” [2.3]. The Greater Earth within our solar system would host economic activities and provide the sphere of terrestrial moral responsibility. What we see here is a growing convergence toward the vision of a cosmic commons—whether called “Greater Earth” or a “cosmocentric ethic”—that makes the entire human community on Earth responsible for ethical deliberation and includes in our sphere of moral responsibility everything in space we can influence.
My preferred term, as I’ve already indicated, is “galactic commons” or “galactic common good.”
