1. For an example of an outcome based on pure science, see my essay “Responsibility and the Scientist” in Bridgstock et al. (eds.) (1998), Science, Technology and Society, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 42–44.
2. I will be concerned here just with acts and not with omissions. I take this general causal principle as my starting point. For some further elaboration and defence of this point of departure, see my “Science and Moral Responsibility”, Melbourne Studies in Education. Special issue on Science and Social Responsibility, forthcoming, 2000.
3. This is the standard way of distinguishing between pure and applied research in science policy, and it will be adopted here—see for instance the definitions given by Harvey Brooks in his introduction to Technology in Retrospect and Critical Events in Science (1968), National Science Foundation, Washington D.C., p. ix. Of course, this should not be taken to imply that there is always a sharp distinction between the two kinds of research such that the elements of a given project can always be easily classified as one or the other. This is especially difficult in the case of industrial research—for an account of the complicated structure of these organisations, see M. Crow and B. Bozeman (1998) Limited by Design, Columbia University Press, New York.
4. Unless the subject was coerced. There is considerable literature on the conditions under which the subject can be said to be ‘in control’, see especially J. Fischer and M. Ravizza (1998) Responsibility and Control, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
5. This is Susan Meyer’s position, and it would be Aristotle’s if it were possible to unambiguously interpret Aristotelian ‘voluntary’ action as intentional action. Meyer discuss this at length in her Aristotle on Moral Responsibility (1993), Blackwell, Oxford. Her interpretation is summarised in Chapter 1. Also, philosophers who endorse the Hebrew-Christian moral tradition see intention as necessary for moral responsibility, see A. Donagan (1970), A theory of Morality, Chicago University Press, Chicago, p.122.