Hippocratic Oaths for Mathematicians?

Philosophia https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-022-00588-8 Hippocratic Oaths for Mathematicians? Colin Jakob Rittberg1 Received: 10 December 2021 / Revised: 23 August 2022 / Accepted: 7 October 2022 © The Author(s) 2022 Abstract In this paper I ask whether mathematicians should swear an oath similar to the Hippocratic oath sworn by some medical professionals as a means to foster morally praiseworthy engagement with the ethical dimensions of mathematics. I individuate four dimensions in which mathematics is ethically charged: (1) applying mathematical knowledge to the world can cause harm, (2) participation of mathematicians in morally contentious practices is an ethical issue, (3) mathematics as a social activity faces relevant ethical concerns, (4) mathematical knowledge itself may be ethically charged. I present a conceptual framework for oaths and discuss some empirical results on the effectiveness of oath-taking to foster morally praiseworthy behaviour. My findings suggest that enforcing oath-taking practices in mathematics is not currently a suitable means to foster ethically praiseworthy behaviour amongst mathematicians. Oaths can, however, provide needed edifying narratives about how to act ethically when acting as a mathematician. Keywords Hippocratic oath · philosophy of mathematical practices · ethics of mathematics · effectiveness of oath-taking · professional ethics Mathematical knowledge-making is ethically charged. Examples abound. Some mathematicians have asked how far mathematicians ought to add their intellectual resources to the advancement of militaristic purposes (Korman & Tong, 2016; Green & Wiener, 1947). Such questions about the ethics of the handling of mathematical knowledge have received a new sense of urgency as the ethical implications of the digital age become clearer (Strümke et al., 2021; Chiodo & Clifton, 2019; Noble, 2018; O’Neil, 2016). Today, some mathematicians have formed Colin Jakob Rittberg ; 1 Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam & Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Amsterdam, Brussel, Netherlands 13 Philosophia groups and societies that are pushing for an ethical agenda in mathematics,1,2 have organised special sessions of the American Mathematical Society,3 argue publicly that mathematicians ought to be aware of the ethical implications of their practices (Müller et al. 2022; Fry 2019; Lott 2004; Shulman, 2002; Hersh, 1990; Davis, 1988), and encourage their students to think about how to do mathematics ethically (Ardila, 2021; Pinch, 2021; Su, 2020; Franklin, 2005). They are joined by mathematics education theorists (Ernest, 2018, 2021; Dubbs, 2020; Vale et al., 2016; Adu-Gyamfi & Okech, 2010), philosophers (Hunsicker & Rittberg, 2022; Rittberg et al., 2020; Tanswell & Rittberg, 2020; Mittelstadt et al., 2016), and sociologists of mathematics (Barany, 2018; MacKenzie, 2009). These various thinkers reveal and discuss numerous ethical issues that mathematicians may encounter in their work as mathematicians. These issues are thus issues in the ethics of mathematics because they are ethical issues faced by mathematicians. It is in this sense that I say that mathematical knowledge-making is ethically charged.4 Ethical reflections about one’s practices have become standard academic procedure. Research funding organisations routinely ask applicants to reflect on the ethics of their proposals. Researchers in various natural sciences, from stem cell researchers to nuclear physicists, have long since realised the ethical dimensions of their activities. Efforts to engage with the ethical dimensions of mathematical practices, however, have come late. As late as 1988 Davis wrote: I would like to tell you today about an international campaign for a special kind of ethical statement, a pledge for mathematicians analogous to the Hippocratic Oath in medicine. I would like to tell you about it, but I cannot: I do not know that there is any such campaign. (Davis 1988) The American Mathematical Society (AMS) only adopted their code of ethics in 1995 (Hersh, 2008). The UK based Royal Statistical Society (RSS) adopted their code in 1993 and revised it in 2014,5 and the UK based Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) formally approved its code as late as 2018.6 Even today many mathematicians think that their activities are largely ethics-free (Ernest, 2018, 2021; Shulman, 2002); cf. also Sect. 1. This raises the question how to effectively encourage mathematicians to engage with the ethical dimensions of mathematical knowledge-making. Some mathematicians have proposed that mathematicians swear a Hippocratic oath to raise awareness amongst mathematicians of the ethical dimensions of their practices (Sample, 2019; Lott, 2004; Davis, 1988). The Hippocratic oath is sworn by 1 Ethics in Mathematics Societyhttps://cueims.soc.srcf.net/. 2 Just Mathematics Collectivehttps://www.justmathematicscollective.net/. 3 http://www.ams.org/meetings/sectional/2257_program_ss19.html. 4 See (Ernest, 2018) for a slightly different take on whether there is anything ethical at stake in mathematics. 5 https://rss.org.uk/about/policy-and-guidelines/code-of-conduct/. 6 https://ima.org.uk/about-us/professional/codes-of-conduct/code-of-conduct-for-ima-advanced-members/. 13 Philosophia some medical professionals; it’s the one in which they swear to “do no harm”. In the original version it is also sworn not to carry out abortions using a pessary. This line is missing in modern versions of the oath, e.g. the Declaration of Geneva or the Oath of Lasagna.7 Interestingly, the line “do no harm” is also missing from many modern versions of the oath, thereby accommodating medical practices such as euthanasia. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is a debate amongst medical professionals about the timeliness of their practice to swear oaths: should any oath be sworn, and if so which one (Hajar, 2017; Sulmasy, 1999; Pellegrino, 2006)? Medical practices differ; medical students in the US swear modern versions of the Hippocratic oath, students in Pakistan swear the original version, and German students of medicine swear no oath at all (Oxtoby, 2016). The debate amongst medical professionals notwithstanding, the term “Hippocratic oath” has taken on a life of its own; when mathematician Hannah Fry calls for a Hippocratic oath for mathematicians in an interview with The Guardian (Sample, 2019), she is not calling on mathematicians not to carry out abortions using pessaries. Rather, she is calling for mathematicians to take an oath to engage with the ethical dimensions of their practices. That is, she focusses on the intent of the Hippocratic oath, rather than its specific content. This has become common practice – e.g. there are Hippocratic oaths for bankers (de Bruin, 2016), geologists (Matteucci et al., 2012), or technologists (Abbas, 2019) – and I will adopt it in this paper: a call for a Hippocratic oath is a call for an oath to engage with the ethical dimensions of one’s pra (...truncated)