Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry
... A key aspect of scientific modeling is the use of epistemic criteria to develop and evaluate models (Kuhn 1977;Longino 1990Longino , 1996. In science, pistemic criteria (or ideals; Chinn, Rinehart, and Buckland 2014) are the shared standards that scientists use to evaluate scientific products such as models and arguments. ...
... Examples of epistemic criteria for evaluating scientific models include evidential fit, explanatory scope, parsimony, and fruitfulness (Kuhn 1977). Longino (1990Longino ( , 2002 has argued that shared norms or criteria like these are central to the development of scientific knowledge. Given the centrality of epistemic criteria in scientific practices, it is important to engage students with epistemic criteria as an aspect of scientific modeling (Cheng and Brown 2015;Pierson et al. 2023;Pluta, Chinn, and Duncan 2011;Schwarz and White 2005). ...
... Our emphasis on epistemic criteria in scientific modeling is grounded both in studies of science (Kuhn 1977;Longino 1990Longino , 1996 and in recent research on science education (Cheng and Brown 2015;Pierson et al. 2023;Pluta, Chinn, and Duncan 2011;Schwarz and White 2005). The theoretical framework that has guided our work-the AIR model of epistemic cognition (Chinn, Rinehart, and Buckland 2014)-has useful applications for conceptualizing epistemic engagement in this core scientific practice. ...
Scientific modeling is a core practice of scientific inquiry. Students' engagement in modeling can be enhanced by attending to epistemic criteria, which in science are standards used to evaluate the validity and accuracy of scientific models. While prior research has focused on students' development and use of epistemic criteria in scientific inquiry environments, less is known about students' metacognitive knowledge about why epistemic criteria matter—their metacognitive epistemic justifications. Investigating students' metacognitive knowledge of criteria can reveal their understandings of the criteria guiding scientific practice (such as modeling), their relative value, and their relationship to epistemic products. We present findings from clinical interviews of student dyads conducted at the end of the implementation of a fifth‐grade model‐based inquiry unit in which the class developed and used epistemic criteria for scientific models. Students' justifications of epistemic criteria revealed their metacognitive knowledge about why criteria, such as evidentiary fit, are important in modeling practice. We also identified themes in students' justifications for the relative importance of different epistemic criteria and the role such justifications played in resolving disagreements about epistemic matters. Our findings illustrate the potential value of engaging students in discourse about metacognitive justifications for epistemic criteria.
... However, clinical equipoise differs from theoretical equipoise in that it requires uncertainty to obtain in the expert medical community rather than the mind of the individual physician. Interestingly, one of the central motivations for this shift is an appeal to the social dimensions of scientific knowledge (Longino 1990). Freedman (1987: 144) writes that medicine "is social rather than individual in nature" and its advancement relies on "progressive consensus within the medical and research communities". ...
Unlike with randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in clinical research, little has been said about the ethical principles that should regulate the use of RCTs in experimental development economics. One well-known principle in clinical research ethics is the principle of clinical equipoise. Some recent commentators suggest that an analogue of clinical equipoise should play a role in experimental development economics. In this article, I first highlight some difficulties with importing the concept to experimental development economics. I then argue that MacKay’s (2018, 2020) notion of policy equipoise avoids these difficulties and has a role to play in experimental development economics.
... By contrast with the Cartesian focus on the individual mind, scientific knowledge inherently refers to social communities (Kuhn, 2012;Pritchard, 2022) and their particular sociotechnological and expert niches (Hacking, 1983;Latour & Woolgar, 2013). As such, scientific practices centrally involve socially scaffolded sources of predictive and descriptive reliability (Longino, 1990;Rouse, 2019Rouse, , 2022. Under a contemporary light, Descartes's method may be seen as trying to circumnavigate fallible knowledge by way of a divestment of trust in contingent social and empirical sources to the benefit of absolute sources of supernatural and introspective privilege. ...
4E (embodied, enactive, embedded, and extended) approaches in cognitive science are unified in their rejection of Cartesianism. Anti-Cartesianism, understood as the rejection of a view of the relation between the mind and the world as mediated (e.g., by mental representations), is a watchword of the 4E family. This article shows how 4E approaches face hitherto underappreciated challenges in overcoming what has been termed the “representational pull” (Di Paolo et al., 2017) of the mediational, Cartesian standard in cognitive science. I argue that present proposals for reaching “escape velocity” from representational pull underestimate the force of mediationalism as part of the territory of cognitive science itself. I then offer a historical contextualization of representational pull in contemporary cognitive science as symptomatic of the latter’s methodological commitment to approaching questions about minds and cognition at the level of individual agents. Rather than resulting from a misapplication of cognitive science, the persistent pull of mediationalism is a function of a core commitment to methodological individualism which continues to define the enterprise of cognitive science. Finally, I will discuss potential options for how 4E theorists might seek to combat the continuing mediational pull at the core of cognitive science.
... Moreover, there is an important debate in the philosophy of science concerning whether the enterprise of arriving even at apparently purely empirical scientific conclusions is itself necessarily value-laden. Those who argue that it is (e.g., Douglas, 2000Douglas, , 2008Douglas, 2009;Longino, 1983;Longino, 1990) thereby challenge what is called the value-free ideal, according to which scientists' (non-epistemic) values should play no role in the justification of their conclusions. Douglas argues that science is value-laden on the grounds of what she calls inductive risk. ...
Mikkel Gerken’s book Scientific Testimony is a welcome step in reconnecting contemporary analytic epistemology with the philosophy of science. The central topic of the book—as it says in the title—is testimony, which has been a major area of research for epistemologists for the last couple of decades. Testimony refers to the process by which we can acquire knowledge or justified belief from what others have told us. Roughly speaking, epistemologists agree that testimony is an important source of knowledge but disagree over the exact conditions under which testimony can lead to knowledge. But for philosophers of science, learning from one another and pursuing inquiry collectively is so central to the scientific enterprise that testimony—as epistemologists understand it—was hardly recognized as a distinct phenomenon warranting its own systematic investigation. Rather, philosophers of science have turned their attention primarily to studying much more prosaic instances of knowledge transmission, like science communication or the interface between science and policy. In this commentary, I examine Gerken's characterization of scientific justification and argue for a social concept of scientific justification that arises out of philosophy of science.
In this article, I sketch out the contours of a political philosophy of experimentation. Drawing on the work of Joseph Rouse, Hans Radder, Gilbert Hottois, and Jerome Ravetz, I argue that such a political philosophy of experimentation already exists, but has often been rendered invisible. Mainstream Anglophone philosophy of science often focuses on epistemological questions, typically at the expense of political questions about science. I argue that such a politicization of philosophy of science can be linked to the topic of experimentation, which transforms epistemological questions about representations of the world into political questions about interventions in the world. In the first section of the article, I examine the work of a number of political philosophers of experimentation in order to make explicit what I mean by a “political” philosophy of experimentation. In the second section of the article, I present a systematized argument why a philosophy of experimentation should be political. Finally, in the last section, I map out more explicitly the set of questions that are central to such a political philosophy of experimentation, in particular questions about what I call the politics of interaction, referring to how science and society should interact; the politics of organization, referring to how science should be organized; and the philosopher as political activist, referring to the question of whether philosophers should also act on their theories.
The European Union’s Digital Services Act requires very large online platforms and search engines providers to assess and mitigate systemic risks. However, regulators and providers both face a fundamental challenge we refer to as the ‘convergence problem’—the inherent difficulty of achieving methodological and definitional agreement across diverse approaches investigating systemic risks. To address this challenge, we propose a novel dual-track framework that distinguishes between a permissive Research Standard promoting methodological diversity and a structured Compliance Standard ensuring accountability through systematic documentation. This approach enables meaningful oversight while preserving space for innovation and platform-specific adaptation, offering a model for regulating emerging technologies that balances regulatory certainty with methodological flexibility. In a self-contained Appendix, we discuss how systemic risk is approached in the recent European Union’s AI Act instead.
Should you defer to individual experts? That is, when a single expert—rather than a group of experts or a expert consensus—testifies that p , should you believe that p ? In this paper, I argue that the answer to this question is, generally speaking, “no.” My argument is based on the notion of a complexity‐based defeater. Some questions are complex in a sense that makes inquirers less reliable at answering them. Expert testimony tends to be about such questions. Expert testimony thus tends to be subject to a complexity‐based defeater. The pressing question, then, is whether the speaker's expertise in turn defeats that complexity‐based defeater. I first draw on the extant literature to show why we cannot reliably make case‐by‐case determinations of whether a particular speaker's expertise counteracts the complexity of the particular question they are answering. Next, I argue that a speaker's status as an expert does not, in general, defeat the complexity‐based defeaters that tend to come with expert testimony. We thus should not, generally speaking, defer to individual experts. I then address some issues with the peer review system that are relevant to the core argument. Finally, I briefly discuss a path to rational deference that remains open: a path through expert judgment aggregation.
This Element advances a novel view – the epistemic labour view – about the role, limits, and potential of the theoretical virtues as the arbiters of various versions of underdetermination. A central focus is to go beyond the often-abstract discussions in this area and to show how the theoretical virtues can illuminate and resolve issues surrounding actual cases of underdetermination found in scientific practice. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Across the globe, there is an increasing concern about the ease with which people accept false or misleading information, even when there is good evidence to the contrary. Some have called this a “Post-Truth” era (McIntyre, Post-truth, MIT Press, 2018). Whether it is the idea that the earth is flat, that vaccines cause autism, or that climate change is a hoax, the willingness of individuals to accept ideas that have no empirical evidence is concerning. Some of these beliefs—for instance, that vaccines are harmful—endanger not only the lives of those who hold them but the whole community which depends on a high level of vaccination to ensure its health. In this paper, we seek to address the question of what contribution science education can and should make to improve young people’s capability to sort reliable information from that which is false or misleading—be it intentional or unintentional. We do this by offering a theoretical argument for the needs of the majority of citizens—individuals who do not have the requisite scientific expertise to evaluate the evidence and arguments for themselves. In doing so, we describe the knowledge and competencies required to be a “competent outsider” to science (Feinstein, Science Education 95(1):168–185, 2011).
The article explores the relationship between science and technology in the context of their social determinants. It compares two contrasting perspectives. The first assumes the autonomy of science and the applied model of theoretical knowledge, aligning with the ideal of value-free science. The second assumes close interdependence of science and technology and the concept of value-laden science. The author argues that philosophical interpretations of relationship between science and technology increasingly support the need to consider the social determinants of both fields. This need arises from the instrumentalization of numerous scientific disciplines which, in conjunction with technology, have given rise to a novel structure of human activity—aptly termed technoscience by Gaston Bachelard. An important focus of this structure is the examination of the values and interests it serves, particularly in light of the issue of social responsibility for the outcomes produced by technoscience.
Scientists often find themselves in disagreement with their peers, yet continue to hold fast to their views. While Conciliationism, a prominent position in the epistemology of disagreement, condemns such steadfastness as epistemically irrational, philosophers of science often defend it as rationally permissible–indeed, even beneficial for scientific progress. This tension gives rise to what we call the puzzle of scientific disagreement.
This chapter explores the concept of health as the absence of disease. It distinguishes between the pathologist’s focus on functional normality and the clinician’s emphasis on clinical relevance. Defining health as the absence of clinical disease separates individual issues from those needing social action. It also shields medicine from political and ideological influence. The chapter questions the superiority of holistic or patient-centered definitions. Instead, it highlights the practical benefits of a minimalist approach. Stable and objective criteria help advance universalist goals in healthcare. They also aid in identifying and addressing health inequalities. The chapter concludes that this concept’s greatest strength is its ability to protect health as a shared and universal good.
Until recently, philosophers of science have largely focused their attention on academic and industry‐funded research, overlooking the contributions of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to science. Nevertheless, NGO‐supported science is highly significant both from a practical perspective (serving as a source of impactful research that can address the needs of local communities) and a theoretical perspective (serving as a unique institutional context for scientific research that contrasts with more well‐studied institutional contexts). To facilitate further studies of NGO‐supported science, this paper provides an overview of what is currently known about its major strengths and weaknesses, as well as potential strategies for addressing those weaknesses. On the basis of this analysis, the paper shows that studying NGO‐supported science can generate important insights about the institutional structure of science, approaches for managing values in science, strategies for generating impactful research, and instances of “false advertising” in science that need to be carefully addressed.
In his recent critique of rational irrationality, Spencer Paulson argues that the concept fails as an explanation of voter behavior because it cannot account for the inherent nature of policy beliefs as commitments to action and is therefore reflectively unstable. This paper defends rational irrationality against Paulson’s critique by examining two key distinctions between voting behavior and Paulson’s toxin puzzle analogy: the role of feasibility in connecting beliefs to practical commitments, and the fundamentally different epistemic processes involved in forming political versus non-political beliefs. By situating these distinctions within Herbert Simon’s bounded rationality framework, I show that rational irrationality remains a coherent and parsimonious explanation for why individuals who demonstrate rationality across most domains exhibit systematic biases specifically in political reasoning.
A recently published article by van Heijst et al. attempted to reconcile two research approaches in the science of emotion—basic emotion theory and the theory of constructed emotion—by suggesting that the former explains emotions as bioregulatory states of the body whereas the latter explains feelings that arise from those state changes. This bifurcation of emotion into objective physical states and subjective feelings involves three misleading simplifications that fundamentally misrepresent the theory of constructed emotion and prevent progress in the science of emotion. In this article we identify these misleading simplifications and the resulting factual errors, empirical oversights, and evolutionary oversimplifications. We then discuss why such errors will continue to arise until scientists realize that the two theories are intrinsically irreconcilable. They rest on incommensurate assumptions and require different methods of evaluation. Only by directly considering these differences will these research silos in the science of emotion finally dissolve, speeding the accumulation of trustworthy scientific knowledge about emotion that is usable in the real world.
En este trabajo defiendo la importancia de tomar en cuenta el papel de las normas implícitas en las prácticas en una noción de objetividad científica. Expongo la noción tradicional de objetividad según la cual la ciencia es objetiva en la medida en que nos proporciona representaciones absolutas del mundo tal como es “independientemente de nuestra mente”. Después discuto las limitaciones de esta perspectiva y propongo en su lugar la objetividad dialéctica, que se caracteriza como una cuestión de grado que se asocia con la evolución de los sistemas de compromisos: un sistema es más objetivo mientras más cerca esté del equilibrio reflexivo. Esta alternativa deja en la incertidumbre el papel de las normas implícitas en las prácticas. Para fortalecerla propongo ampliar la noción de equilibro reflexivo y así pueda gestionar mejor los sesgos que conllevan este tipo de normas.
The battle cry among environmentally-conscious individuals exerts great influence among the youth. This paper elaborates the perspectives and experiences of the youth in pursuing environmental projects. Anchored on Stern, Dietz, Abel, Guagnano, and Kalof’s (1999) value-belief-norm theory for social movement, we examined how youth participation poses excitement and anxiety, most specifically among students. The narrative inquiry, which includes indepth semi-structured interviews, observations, and document analysis, was used to obtain rich data from three individuals who are active members of an environment-conscious youth organization in Ilocos Norte. The findings were analyzed and organized into narratives. The promises of youth participation include the existence of a vibrant and active youth organization in the province, full government support, and fulfillment of an intergenerational responsibility. The dilemmas include time constraints, conflict with schooling, and decreasing interest. Other interesting themes were also noted. It is recommended that young people participate in social movements on environmentalism.
Research funding organizations increasingly steer researchers to integrate certain perspectives into the content of their research. Little is known, however, about the mechanisms by which these policies are operationalized. This study addresses a popular measure relied upon by research funding organizations to increase the integration of the sex and gender perspectives into the content of research - namely persuasion. An analysis of the rhetoric employed by the European Commission – aimed at Horizon Europe grant applicants – uncovers a variety of persuasion techniques, including appeals to reason (logos), character (ethos) and emotion (pathos). The paper discusses different challenges in assessing the workings and efficacy of this type of implementation measure.
Concerns about social justice are long standing across many fields. In this article, we outline key social justice concepts in relation to science communication, before examining the politics of science and science communication in more detail. We argue more focus is needed on how certain forms of politics and power travel through science and science communication in ways that have created, reinforced and/or ameliorated structural inequities. We argue that foregrounding social justice perspectives helps make explicit the power dynamics involved in creating and communicating knowledge. For us, this is a purposeful move that resists the urge to tidy away, ‘naturalise’ or otherwise hide politics and power. We invite readers to collectively interrogate our existing science communication theories and practices with a view to transforming them to be more just and meaningfully improve people’s lives and ecosystems.
This chapter investigates how the social dimensions and social/cultural embeddedness of science are portrayed in middle and high school physics and biology textbooks across diverse societal and cultural contexts, specifically from the USA, Jordan, Oman, and Lebanon. Using a structured document analysis approach, sixteen textbooks—four from each country—were analyzed to assess the extent and manner in which these two aspects of the Nature of Science (NOS) are represented. Findings reveal that the social and cultural aspects of science are generally underrepresented, with these themes often presented through isolated examples rather than being integrated as central themes throughout the textbooks. The chapter underscores the need for a comprehensive inclusion of social and cultural dimensions in science education materials to more accurately reflect the Nature of Science, thus supporting informed and culturally competent scientific understanding in diverse educational contexts.
One important question in emotion science is determining what emotions there are. To answer this question, researchers have assumed either that folk emotion concepts are unsuitable for scientific inquiry, or that they are constitutive or explanatorily significant for emotion research. Either option faces a challenge from the cultural variability of folk emotion concepts, prompting debate on the universality of emotions. I contend that cultural variation in emotion should be construed as variations in components rather than entire emotional repertoires. To do this, I distinguish between hypotheses concerning emotional repertoires and those focused on specific emotional features within various cultural contexts. I hold that decisions regarding emotional repertoire hypotheses call for either revising current classification systems or maintaining them, but that, given underdetermination by evidence, this entails a preference for maintaining emotion taxonomies. This, in turn, leaves empirical hypotheses on specific emotional features as the most viable avenue for scientific inquiry.
Contemporary metaphysicians who might be classified as 'neo-Aristotelian' tend towards positions reminiscent of Aristotle's metaphysics – such as category theory, trope theory, substance ontology, endurantism, hylomorphism, essentialism, and agent causation. However, prima facie it seems that one might hold any one of these positions while rejecting the others. What perhaps unifies a neo-Aristotelian approach in metaphysics, then, is not a shared collection of positions so much as a willingness to engage with Aristotle and to view this historical figure as providing a fruitful way of initially framing certain philosophical issues. This Element will begin with a methodological reflection on the contribution historical scholarship on Aristotle might make to contemporary metaphysics. It will then discuss as case studies category theory, properties, substance theory, and hylomorphism. The aim of the Element is to make the relevant exegetical questions accessible to contemporary metaphysicians, and the corresponding contemporary topics accessible to historians.
The article examines the main works of the famous American historian of science Naomi Oreskes, highlighting examples of scientific misconceptions and their background in sources of funding, academic ambitions, and social values. Her works attract the attention of both a wide range of readers and specialists. For fans of the popular style, complex questions about the relationship between science and business in the United States, modern criteria of research activity, and the epistemological role of ecology in the system of scientific knowledge are presented. For specialists, a thorough archival work is obvious, and the novelty of covering events from a historical perspective is interesting. Describing examples of incompetent research and views, Oreskes uses the phrase scientific ignorance. Due to the lack of a direct semantic analogue in Russian, the concept of delusion replaces it in the article. The analysis and synthesis of the key theoretical provisions of Oreskes' works was carried out by identifying the role of epistemic standards that the author adhered to in characterizing questionable research practices. Historical-genetic and historical-systemic methods were used to study the relationship of misconceptions with commercial interests in the socio-historical context of the development of science in the United States. The productivity of the regulatory function of expert consensus, interdisciplinarity, value pluralism in the criticism of destructive doubts, outdated criteria, and fundamentalism in the scientific community is determined. The history of scientific misconceptions is an important aspect of the sociology of knowledge, presented in Oreskes' writings using a variety of empirical material. The historical approach made it possible to highlight both the social and epistemological consequences of distortions and falsifications in science that arose under the influence of the material motives of scientists or their sponsors and employers. The appeal to Oreskes' works is designed to actualize the sense of social responsibility among scientists, which, in her opinion, contributes to the perception of research norms adequate to the modern level of knowledge. The article may be useful for specialists in the history and philosophy of science, used in educational courses in these disciplines.
This paper argues that we are not just social epistemic creatures because we operate in social contexts. We are social epistemic creatures because of the nature of our epistemic cognitive capacities. In The Enigma of Reason , Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber develop and defend the view that reasoning is a social competence that yields epistemic benefits for individuals through social interaction with others. I argue an epistemological consequence of their position is that, when beliefs are formed and sustained by dialogical deliberation, the relevant justification-conferring process doesn’t occur solely within the cognition of the subject whose belief is under evaluation. Rather, it extends to include her interactive engagement with other deliberative participants. I argue this demonstrates that not all justification-conferring is evidential. As such, the analysis not only supports reconceiving the process reliabilist’s notion of justification-conferring processes; it also serves as an argument against evidentialism. A goal of this paper is to demonstrate that social epistemology isn’t merely a siloed offshoot of traditional epistemology. Even when approaching social epistemology using a conservative methodology, our investigation has serious implications for fundamental questions concerning epistemic normativity.
This paper analyzes the conception of objectivity in psychiatry as a structural factor that may promote epistemically unjust clinical practices. It argues that because psychiatry primarily relies on patients’ reports of mental symptoms and clinicians’ observations of behavior, it has had to develop ways to address these in a standardized, objective manner. Standardized instruments provide reliability and – presumably – validity in psychiatric assessment and diagnosis. However, by their very nature, they must set aside patients’ perspectives and idiosyncrasies. Understanding objectivity as standardization, this paper argues, promotes treating patients as mere informants or, worse, as sources of information – which may underpin various forms of epistemic injustice, such as hermeneutical or contributory injustice. This paper also addresses recent proposals to include patients’ perspectives in the DSM revision processes, arguing that while this represents a step towards social and epistemic justice, as well as an improvement in diagnostic classification, it remains insufficient for achieving epistemic justice due to the constraints inherent in standardization. The conclusion is that rethinking objectivity beyond standardization is necessary to achieve epistemic justice in psychiatry.
Noting continued exploitation of women at work (unequal pay and opportunities), the chapter takes women’s double shift as a theme, for example care work often both unpaid (private service) and paid, with the wages-for-housework campaign failing in Europe though some progress made on childcare, less so on domestic violence. The chapter rejects bio-determinism pointing to the continued importance of socialisation for women’s roles and arguments around gender or class as the primary agency for social change.
Social reproduction and patriarchy are discussed, and the danger of functionalist arguments highlighted, with the failure to progress the position of women in the USSR as opposed to progress in China and Cuba. Families are units of consumption, the target of advertising, however societies regard household production of use-values as non-productive and unworthy of reward; many women now avoid or delay marriage and child-bearing and same-gender relationships are widely accepted, identity politics and recognition are critically discussed and interplay between race and gender, along with women’s ways of knowing and epistemic stance, which for some feminists is anti-socialist.
Public services play an important role as means and ends in the struggle for socialism, Bolshevik women demanding collectivised laundry, cleaning and food services and Zetkin liberation by work in addition to education access and equal job and political opportunities; also, the chapter points to debates around love as a learning process, motherhood, sexuality and love.
This approach offers a structured method for organizations to develop and articulate their ethical frameworks, particularly in areas where legal guidance is limited or nonexistent. Problem: This study investigates establishing core values in a legal vacuum, where research, design, or implementation of an invention or innovation is feasible but lacks regulations. We leverage Large Language Models (LLMs) to analyze codes of conduct from 1000 organizations (profit and not-for-profit) to identify core values. Metrics such as accuracy, bias, completeness, consistency, and relevance are used to validate the performance of LLMs in this context. From 493 non-profit organizations and companies on the Fortune 500 list, a total of 8646 core values including variations across 89 sectors were found. Using accuracy, bias, completeness, consistency and relevance as metrics for evaluating result from the LMMs, the number of core values is reduced to 362. The research employs a ten-step decision-making process to guide ethical decision-making when clear rules, laws, or regulations are absent. The framework presents how objectivity can be maintained without losing personal values. This research contributes to understanding how core values are established and applied in the absence of formal regulations.
Professional and applied ethicists have evidenced the importance and efficacy of professional ethics education in universities, with some arguing that, in addition to advancing the development of professional ethics standards and individual moral responsibility, professional ethics education should itself be undertaken in an ethical fashion. This paper argues that theorizing ethics enculturation as a multidimensional and dialectical process allows educators and theorists to identify, examine, and redress morally objectionable forms of ethics education. To remain ethical, professional ethics enculturation must identify and avoid morally impermissible approaches that negatively impact those who undergo ethics enculturation and/or those whom the profession serves. Impermissible approaches include moral indoctrination, neglect, corruption, and injury, among others, and operate implicitly and explicitly in professional and educational contexts. Moreover, professional ethics enculturation must remain sufficiently bidirectional to ensure that both developing professionals become properly enculturated within the profession and that the profession is responsive to the needs and concerns of future generations of professionals.
In this paper, we will focus on a specific way in which non-epistemic values can influence scientific inquiry, i.e., how they affect the way in which members of a scientific community apply epistemic values. We will first introduce the concept of epistemic niche construction in science, that is, the idea that the epistemic commitments underlying the practice of a scientific community result from a feedback-loop process between the scientific practice itself and the related disciplinary matrix. We will then describe how non-epistemic values can affect the different steps of this feedback-loop process. We will substantiate our argumentation through a historical case study: the rise and fall of nineteenth-century craniology.
Scenarios and pathways, as defined in the SSP-RCP framework, are central to recent climate research and the latest IPCC report. Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) offer a small set of alternative futures through qualitative narratives and quantitative projections. A key use of SSP-based scenarios is mitigation analysis, presenting decision-makers with a seemingly neutral set of policy options. However, all SSPs assume continuous global economic growth (GEGA) through 2100, effectively narrowing the solution space and embedding value-laden assumptions that challenge the IPCC’s claim to policy neutrality. Post-growth scholars contest GEGA, but post-growth mitigation scenarios have yet to be fully integrated into this scenario framework. From a philosophy of value-laden science perspective, I argue that this integration is necessary. I propose two approaches to do so, demonstrating how inclusion of post-growth scenarios aligns with a diversity criterion — ultimately enhancing the framework’s objectivity and strengthening the IPCC’s policy neutrality
Scientific reforms proposed in response to moral concerns about corrupted science are reminiscent of the Christian Reformation, which similarly formed a moral reorientation as a reaction to malpractices. In this study, we compare these moral reorientation processes to contextualize two different moral programmes of the scientific reform movement and their sociopolitical conditions. We argue that such an explication of moral programmes is vital to build legitimacy and reflect on value-prioritization. While epistemic programmes are foregrounded, moral programmes also play a crucial role in shaping science, and different moral programmes offer different promises for the sustained support of credible, reliable, fair and equitable science. We discuss the virtue and equity programmes, and through interrogating both programmes in relation to the Reformation, we display the relevance of sociopolitical contexts to how key values operate in science and generate orders of worth. These insights aim to stimulate debate about the conditions for opting for either of these moral programmes. In our view, not all moral programmes offer equal promise for the sustained support of credible, equitable and fair science.
Polycrises are driven by an interaction of factors such as climate change, species extinction, pandemics, overpopulation, and economic inequality. They reinforce each other, increasing the dangers. Man’s influence on them is rooted in his ancient demand for dominion over nature and his weaker fellows. With the modern Enlightenment and the associated methods of science, technology and economics, this claim to dominance begins to irreversibly destroy nature, and with it the basis of our own lives. Ways to overcome the polycrises therefore presuppose a radical change of consciousness, which abolishes the sharp separation of human mind and material nature. Humanity should again experience itself as a part of the entire ecosystem and act accordingly.
The concept of transdisciplinarity contributes to this. Beyond disciplinary boundaries, it holistically integrates different forms of human knowledge. It overcomes the limitations of disciplinary thinking and combines scientific, philosophical, ethical, and spiritual dimensions. Referring to philosophical thinkers from Heraklit, and Plato to Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Ludwig Fleck, Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, Basarab Nicolescu and others, the contribution emphasises the limitations of disciplinary thinking and the need to complement it. The author’s model identifies a vertical and a horizontal movement of a transdisciplinary mind. The former ties immanent and transcendent dimensions of reality back to the source of all being (transcendental movement). The latter integrates the diverse forms of extra-scientific knowledge and disciplines to gain a better understanding of our world and to address complex problems. Especially transdisciplinary responsibility is in high demand here. After all, the fundamental power of man to reshape the world with the help of his knowledge forces him to take into account the far-reaching consequences for the whole and to shape it in a way that is benefitial to all forms of life.
In his 2008 book, Film and Philosophy: Taking Movies Seriously, philosopher Daniel Shaw explores the question: Can one “do” philosophy in a film? We are quite comfortable with the idea of philosophical works being in a written format, but what would it mean to have a film which is philosophical? Shaw argues that it is possible for films to be philosophical, although very few films even attempt to do this. In this chapter, I want to explore the more focused question of whether and how a film can “do” philosophy of perception. Given that film is specifically a visual and auditory medium, how does this affect what philosophical work films can do with respect to perception more generally? Related to this is the question of how film can be used to portray and explain the myriad non-human animal senses and neuroatypical sensory abilities that science has discovered. How successful can film be in depicting what it is like to perceive the world as science explains that a tick does or as a synesthetic person does?
AI in Society provides an interdisciplinary corpus for understanding artificial intelligence (AI) as a global phenomenon that transcends geographical and disciplinary boundaries. Edited by a consortium of experts hailing from diverse academic traditions and regions, the 11 edited and curated sections provide a holistic view of AI’s societal impact. Critically, the work goes beyond the often Eurocentric or U.S.-centric perspectives that dominate the discourse, offering nuanced analyses that encompass the implications of AI for a range of regions of the world. Taken together, the sections of this work seek to move beyond the state of the art in three specific respects. First, they venture decisively beyond existing research efforts to develop a comprehensive account and framework for the rapidly growing importance of AI in virtually all sectors of society. Going beyond a mere mapping exercise, the curated sections assess opportunities, critically discuss risks, and offer solutions to the manifold challenges AI harbors in various societal contexts, from individual labor to global business, law and governance, and interpersonal relationships. Second, the work tackles specific societal and regulatory challenges triggered by the advent of AI and, more specifically, large generative AI models and foundation models, such as ChatGPT or GPT-4, which have so far received limited attention in the literature, particularly in monographs or edited volumes. Third, the novelty of the project is underscored by its decidedly interdisciplinary perspective: each section, whether covering Conflict; Culture, Art, and Knowledge Work; Relationships; or Personhood—among others—will draw on various strands of knowledge and research, crossing disciplinary boundaries and uniting perspectives most appropriate for the context at hand.
We argue for the epistemic and ethical advantages of pluralism in Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) in the context of Large Language Models (LLMs). Drawing on social epistemology and pluralist philosophy of science, we suggest ways in which RHLF can be made more responsive to human needs and how we can address challenges along the way. The paper concludes with an agenda for change, i.e. concrete, actionable steps to improve LLM development.
This chapter challenges adult-centered notions of personhood, which lie at the basis of the current discussion on first-person authority. It examines the role assigned to children in philosophical discourse arguing that addressing the book’s central question calls for a conception of personhood that is both non-intellectualized and non-individualistic. Finally, it suggests that focusing on communicative social interactions––the locus of first-person authority––and how we treat each other as persons within that sphere offers an alternative basis for a more inclusive conception of personhood.
Epistemic injustice is inherently connected to epistemic power and epistemic agency: understanding and addressing the former allows us to better understand and address the latter, and vice versa. Yet, despite vast and rich discussions of epistemic injustice, which often invoke the notions of epistemic power and epistemic agency, both notions remain undertheorized and hence largely elusive. This book offers a systematic account of epistemic power and agency by turning to the dynamics of epistemic injustice—that is, the many forms epistemic injustice can take, the different sites and mechanisms through which it operates, and the various transformations consequently required to cultivate greater epistemic justice. Adopting standpoint theory both as a theory and as a methodology, the book focuses on several pressing social questions, such as deliberative impasses in divided societies, colonial memory, academic migration, the underrepresentation of members of non-dominant groups in certain fields, and the marginalization of minoritized minds, such as intellectually disabled people and Autistics. By analyzing these social questions through the lens of the dynamics of epistemic injustice, the book develops a systematic account of epistemic power and agency.
Community science—the participation of people who are not professional scientists in scientific research—has enormous potential benefits. This paper addresses community science that is organized around large, stable, digital platforms. One of several commonly expressed worries concerns the relationship among community science, values, and objectivity. In this paper I analyze ways in which the value-free ideal (VFI) functions in scientific and extra-academic communities engaged in community science. I argue that expressions of the VFI can promote objectivity by facilitating interactions within and across these communities, even if the VFI itself is unrealistic. The paper emphasizes the importance of a fully social model of community science.
Groups are viewpoint diverse when their members think about the same problem in different ways. There exists a multi‐disciplinary literature arguing that viewpoint diversity improves a group's epistemic outcomes. But within that literature, the concept of a viewpoint goes unanalyzed. This paper builds on work by the political philosopher Gerald Gaus to develop an analysis of a problem‐specific viewpoint. It considers two cases where viewpoint diversity improves decision‐making quality. In the first case, group members all share criteria for evaluating solutions to their problem, such that all agree on which solution is “best” when they find it. In the second case, group members do not share these criteria because the evaluation of solutions is essentially contestable. Although the existing evidence is not decisive, we have reason to believe that viewpoint diversity, when properly harnessed, improves epistemic outcomes in both cases.
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