Learning from Others’ Evidence: A Focus on Non-Epistemic Values

Does environmental science crowd out non-epistemic values?

Social epistemology and the ethics of research.

Value-entanglement and the integrity of scientific research

Reviewed by: Current Controversies in Values and Science ed. by Kevin C. Elliott, Daniel Steel Inmaculada de Melo-Martín Kevin C. Elliott, Daniel Steel, eds. Current Controversies in Values and Science, Routledge, 2017. As a general claim, most philosophers of science accept that science is not value-free. The disagreements lie in the proverbial details. The essays in Current Controversies in Values and Science, edited by Kevin Elliott and Daniel Steel focus on such details. Like other volumes in the Routledge Current Controversies in Philosophy’s series, this one asks ten well-known philosophers of science to engage with various questions. Each question receives roughly positive and negative responses, though the authors’ nuanced answers make clear that the contrasting views also involve significant agreement. The first question asks whether we can distinguish epistemic from nonepistemic values. Hugh Lacey argues that such methodological distinction is not only possible but also desirable. For him, different attitudes are appropriate regarding scientific theories and attention to these different attitudes demonstrates the importance of the distinction. Epistemic—or rather cognitive—values are those that allow us to evaluate how well a scientific theory provides understanding of a particular phenomenon. Non-epistemic values, and in particular social values, on the other hand, allow us to evaluate social arrangements and social institutions and practices. Only cognitive values, Lacey contends, are relevant to deciding whether a theory is impartially held of a set of phenomena. But scientific theories can be more than just impartially held. They can also be adopted, i.e., used as basis for further research, or endorsed, i.e., used to inform decision-making. According to Lacey, non-cognitive values are relevant to the justification of the attitudes of adopting and endorsing, even if they do not play a proper role in impartially holding a theory. Phyllis Rooney agrees that a general methodological distinction between epistemic or cognitive values and non-epistemic ones is possible, but she questions the usefulness of a sharp distinction. Her contention is that rather than a strict delineation, we find a “robust borderlands area” between [End Page E-5] epistemic and non-epistemic values. Rooney questions the sharpness of an epistemic/non-epistemic values distinction on various grounds. First, she argues, philosophers disagree even about what values count as epistemic or cognitive. This is so, she points out, because science has a multiplicity of legitimate goals, and what one takes to be scientific inquiry’s primary goal(s) will affect what counts as an epistemic value. Second, non-epistemic values are hardly a uniform group, but more importantly, the use of some of those values, e.g., feminist values, has clearly contributed to the development of epistemically sound theories. Although at first sight it might appear that Lacey and Rooney defend opposing sides, the disagreements are more a question of emphasis. For Lacey, the distinction between epistemic/non-epistemic values is important because a failure to make such delineation effectively gives scientists more authority in policy decisions than they should have. Rooney is however concerned that drawing that distinction risks inappropriately delegitimizing the use of some non-epistemic values when conducting research while legitimizing the use of some epistemic values that depend on people’s judgments about what the primary goal of science might be. Both agree that non-epistemic values can and should play very significant roles in scientific inquiry. The second question tackled in the collection concerns whether science must be committed to prioritizing epistemic over non-epistemic values. Daniel Steel argues for a qualified priority of epistemic concerns in science. He offers two arguments for his position. First, science, he contends, has an immediate aim, which is to advance knowledge. Second, a rejection of the priority of epistemic values can lead to what he calls the “Ibsen predicament,” wherein attempts to promote a valued social aim can lead to corrupted science. Steel claims that only maintaining the priority of epistemic values can protect us against this outcome. Matthew Brown presents the opposing view and argues that we should reject any strong version of the priority of epistemic values thesis. He presents three arguments to defend his claim. First, epistemic and nonepistemic considerations are too entangled in...

The Value Free Ideal (VFI) suggests that non-epistemic (moral, political, environmental, economic and similar) values, commitments and aspirations have no legitimate role to play in scientific judgment-formation. This chapter introduces some of the key arguments for and against the VFI and discusses the implications of these arguments for conceptualizing the accountability of scientific experts in the context of evidence-based policy and regulation. It also introduces an example concerning toxicological assessments of agricultural pesticides. The chapter describes the contexts where the inclusion of non-epistemic value judgments in science is impermissible according to the proponents of the VFI and discusses the main arguments for and against the VFI. It illustrates some of the key concepts in the contemporary philosophy of science that challenge the VFI and transcend it by allowing non-epistemic values a more expanded role to play in scientific judgment than the VFI permits.

In recent years, philosophers of science have begun to realize that the clear separation of the creation of models in academia and the application of models outside science is not possible. When these philosophers address hybrid contexts in which science is entwined with policy, business, and other realms of society, these often practically oriented realms no longer represent ‘the surroundings’ of science but rather are considered an essential part of it. I argue—and demonstrate empirically—that the judgement of a theory or model conducted by scientists in such hybrid contexts may contain two parts: one is truth supportive and the other is utility oriented. In relation to the debate on science and values, the article seeks to reinforce the argument in modern philosophy of science that the boundaries between epistemic and non-epistemic values are blurred. The article stresses that non-epistemic values may be also understood as values that contribute to the instrumental success of a theory or model and—in this way—influence scientific practice in the hybrid contexts.

This article motivates a shift in certain strands of the debate over legitimate roles for nonepistemic values in scientific practice from investigating what is involved in taking cognitive attitudes like acceptance toward an empirical hypothesis to looking at a social understanding of assertion, the act of communicating that hypothesis. I argue that speech act theory’s account of assertion as a type of doing makes salient legitimate roles nonepistemic values can play in scientific practice. The article also shows how speech act theory might provide a framework for fruitfully extending aspects of the social and pragmatic turns in the philosophy of science.

This article considers academic energy modelling as a scientific practice. While models and modelling have been of considerable interest in energy social science research, few studies have brought together approaches from philosophy of science and anthropology to examine energy models both conceptually and in the applied sense. We develop a conceptual approach on epistemological ethics that distinguishes between epistemic values – such as accuracy, simplicity, and adequate representation – and non-epistemic values – such as policy relevance, methodological limitations, and learning – built into energy models. The research question is: how do modellers articulate and negotiate epistemic values and what does this imply for the status of models in scientific practice and policymaking? The empirical part of the article draws from ethnographic fieldwork and interviews amongst 40 energy modellers in university research groups in the UK from two complementary arenas: scholars preparing their PhD in modelling and scholars working in a large-scale energy modelling project. Our research uses ethnographic methods to complement themes recognised in earlier literatures on modelling, demonstrating what models and modellers know about the energy system and how they come to know it in particular ways.

In this paper, I present a model of application-oriented science, to supplement existing work in science and technology studies on the re-orientation of scientific research. On this “branch-formation” model, research efforts may be guided by non-epistemic values without compromising their epistemic value: they may involve completion of mechanism representations that serve control over these mechanisms while also adding to our understanding of them. I illustrate this model with a case study from photovoltaic technology, involving the possible use of materials with the so-called ‘perovskite’ structure in dye-sensitized solar cells. The paper has three parts. The first argues how existing work on the increasing application-orientedness of scientific research can and must be supplemented with a perspective from the philosophy of science. The second presents the branch-formation model, which combines central ideas of the ‘finalization-of-science’ program of the Starnberg school with recent work in ‘mechanistic’ philosophy of science and in the philosophy of technology. The third part illustrates the branch-formation model with current developments in research on perovskite solar cells.

While few would question the importance of the objectivity of science for providing a well-supported factual basis upon which policy decisions can be reliably made, it is far from clear what scientific objectivity is or how it should be achieved. In recent decades, questions regarding the objectivity of science have become increasingly salient in framing public debates about science and science policy: for example, can we trust medical research when it is funded by pharmaceutical companies? Or, whose research in climate science meets the standards of scientific objectivity? At the same time, the objectivity of science has become an increasingly important topic among historians and philosophers of science, as well as researchers in related fields in science and technology studies. In the wake of Karl Popper’s (1972) account of objective knowledge and Thomas Kuhn’s (1977) landmark analysis of scientific values in connection with issues of scientific objectivity and rationality, philosophers of science have attempted to clarify questions concerning the role of values in theory choice, the distinction between epistemic (or “cognitive”) and non-epistemic (or “social”) values, and the ways in which different kinds of values (including non-epistemic values) contribute to the objectivity of science. By contrast, historians of science have offered rich historical analyses that aim to clarify the changing historical meanings of objectivity by examining the emergence of particular scientific ideals in specific episodes in the history of science. These historical studies have revealed the complex, multifaceted, and ultimately contingent nature of the ideals that contribute to our current notions and understandings of scientific objectivity. Finally, sociologists and anthropologists of science have offered analyses that explicitly bring into question specific understandings of scientific objectivity as, for example, the disinterestedness or value neutrality of scientific work, by revealing the role of social processes—including the workings of structures of credit, rhetorical practices in science, and the pressure of funding regimes—in the production of scientific knowledge. Taken together, these investigations offer compelling reasons for thinking that scientific objectivity is much more complicated than one might have imagined. Two emergent themes from the science and technology studies literature are especially important in this regard.

This chapter seeks to advance our understanding of engineering knowledge. The authors distinguish existing views of engineering knowledge as subordinating, contrasting, or assimilating it to (natural-)scientific knowledge. After identifying shortcomings and useful elements of each view, the authors offer ingredients for an alternative analysis, focusing on knowledge produced in the design of high-tech systems. This analysis builds on elements of existing views of engineering knowledge, as well as recent work in the philosophy of science. The authors argue that such design involves sets of epistemic activities, resulting in a variety of rules, where both activities and rules are governed by a distinctive set of epistemic and non-epistemic values. To illustrate this analysis, the authors use the development of the nuclear-fusion test reactor ITER as a running example.

The Value-free ideal of science (VFI) is a view that claims that scientists should not use non-epistemic values when they are justifying their hypotheses, and is widely considered to be obsolete in the philosophy of science. I will defend the ideal by demonstrating that acceptance of non-epistemic values, prohibited by VFI, necessitates legitimizing certain problematic scientific practices. Such practices, including biased methodological decisions or Questionable Research Practices (QRP), significantly contribute to the Replication Crisis. I will argue that the realizability of VFI is not a necessary condition for its validity. Then, I will show how some of the prominent proposals of value-laden science legitimize problematic scientific practices, provide real-world examples, and generalize the argument. Finally, I will show how value-laden methodological decisions contribute to the Replicability Crisis and discuss two strategies for realizing VFI.

With twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy of science's unfolding acceptance of the nature of scientific inquiry being value-laden, the persistent worry has been that there are no means for legitimate negotiation of the social or non-epistemic values that enter into science. The rejection of the value-free ideal in science has thereby been coupled with the spectres of indiscriminate relativism and bias in scientific inquiry. I challenge this view in the context of recently expressed concerns regarding Canada's death of evidence controversy. The worry, raised by Stathis Psillos, is that as constructivist accounts of science demoted the previously secure status of evidence for drawing justified conclusions in science, we were left with no rational delineation between the right and wrong values for science. The implication for the death of evidence controversy is that we may have no rational grounds for claiming that the Canadian Government is wrong to interfere with scientific enterprise. But he does offer another avenue for reaching the conclusion that the wrong social values are directing the current stifling of some sectors of Canadian science. Psillos draws from standpoint epistemologies to devise a salient defence of ‘valuing evidence’ as a universalizable social value. That is, government bodiesoughtto enable scientific research via adequate funding as well as political non-interference. In this paper, I counter that (i) non-epistemic valuescanbe rationally evaluated and that (ii) standpoint epistemology's universalizable standpoint provides an inadequate framework for negotiating social values in science. Regarding (i), I draw from the evidence-based medicine debate in philosophy of medicine and from feminist empiricist investigations into the science–values relationship in order to make the argument for empirically driven value arbitration. If social values can berationallychosen in the context of justification, then we can have grounds for charging the Canadian leadership with being ‘at war with science’. (ii) I further argue that my recommended empiricist methodology is preferable to Psillos's search for universalizable perspectives for negotiating social values in science because the latter method permits little more than the trivial conclusion that evidence is valuable to science.

No brute facts: The Principle of Sufficient Reason in ordinary thought

The controversy over the old ideal of “value-free science” has cooled significantly over the past decade. Many philosophers of science now agree that even ethical and political values may play a substantial role in all aspects of scientific inquiry. Consequently, in the last few years, work in science and values has become more specific: Which values may influence science, and in which ways? Or, how do we distinguish illegitimate from illegitimate kinds of influence? In this paper, I argue that this problem requires philosophers of science to take a new direction. I present two case studies in the influence of values on scientific inquiry: feminist values in archaeology and commercial values in pharmaceutical research. I offer a preliminary assessment of these cases, that the influence of values was legitimate in the feminist case, but not in the pharmaceutical case. I then turn to three major approaches to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate influences of values, including the distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic values and Heather Douglas’ distinction between direct and indirect roles for values. I argue that none of these three approaches gives an adequate analysis of the two cases. In the concluding section, I briefly sketch my own approach, which draws more heavily on ethics than the others, and is more promising as a solution to the current problem. This is the new direction in which I think science and values should move.