Democracy has been a flawed hegemony since the fall of communism. Its flexibility, its commitment to equality of representation, and its recognition of the legitimacy of opposition politics are all positive features for political institutions. But democracy has many deficiencies: it is all too easily held hostage by powerful interests; it often fails to advance social justice; and it does not cope well with a number of features of the political landscape, such as political identities, boundary disputes, and environmental crises. (...) Although democracy is valuable it fits uneasily with other political values and is in many respects less than equal to the demands it confronts. In this volume prominent political theorists and social scientists present original discussions of such central issues. Democracy's Values deals with the nature and value of democracy, particularly the tensions between it and such goods as justice, equality, efficiency, and freedom. (shrink)

_Current Controversies in Values and Science_ asks ten philosophers to debate five questions that are driving contemporary work in this important area of philosophy of science. The book is perfect for the advanced student, building up her knowledge of the foundations of the field while also engaging its most cutting-edge questions. Introductions and annotated bibliographies for each debate, preliminary descriptions of each chapter, study questions, and a supplemental guide to further controversies involving values in science help (...) provide clearer and richer snapshots of active controversies for all readers._ _. (shrink)

This essay argues for a pragmatist notion of inquiry which ties together science and morality into a seamless whole, pace David Hume, Gilbert Harman, and others who would separate science and morality as different kinds of inquiry.

This essay argues for a pragmatist notion of inquiry which ties together science and morality into a seamless whole, pace David Hume, Gilbert Harman, and others who would separate science and morality as different kinds of inquiry.

Science is one of the most important forces in contemporary society. The most reliable source of knowledge about the world, science shapes the technological possibilities before us, informs public policy, and is crucial to measuring the efficacy of public policy. Yet it is not a simple repository of facts on which we can draw. It is an ongoing process of evidence gathering, discovery, contestation, and criticism. I will argue that an understanding of the nature of science and (...) the scientific process should be the central goal for scientific literacy, rather than a grasp of specific facts. With this understanding of science as a backdrop, the paper then turns to modes for citizen engagement with science. This paper articulates different ways citizens can engage with science, including four avenues for legitimate contestation of scientific claims. I then look more closely at contestation of science on the basis of values. That science can be legitimately contested by non-experts on a range of grounds means that science communication should not just aim at getting citizens to accept scientific claims, but rather to engage in a more robust two-way conversation about science. (shrink)

Science is one of the most important forces in contemporary society. The most reliable source of knowledge about the world, science shapes the technological possibilities before us, informs public policy, and is crucial to measuring the efficacy of public policy. Yet it is not a simple repository of facts on which we can draw. It is an ongoing process of evidence gathering, discovery, contestation, and criticism. I will argue that an understanding of the nature of science and (...) the scientific process should be the central goal for scientific literacy, rather than a grasp of specific (often disciplinary) facts. With this understanding of science as a backdrop, the paper then turns to modes for citizen engagement with science. This paper articulates different ways citizens can engage with science, including four avenues for legitimate contestation of scientific claims. I then look more closely at contestation of science on the basis of values. That science can be legitimately contested by non-experts on a range of grounds means that science communication should not just aim at getting citizens to accept scientific claims, but rather to engage in a more robust two-way conversation about science. (shrink)

Few people, if any, still argue that science in all its aspects is a value-free endeavor. At the very least, values affect decisions about the choice of research problems to investigate and the uses to which the results of research are applied. But what about the actual doing of science? -/- As Science, Values, and Objectivity reveals, the connections and interactions between values and science are quite complex. The essays in this volume identify (...) the crucial values that play a role in science, distinguish some of the criteria that can be used for value identification, and elaborate the conditions for warranting certain values as necessary or central to the very activity of scientific research. -/- Recently, social constructivists have taken the presence of values within the scientific model to question the basis of objectivity. However, the contributors to <I>Science, Values, and Objectivity</I> recognize that such acknowledgment of the role of values does not negate the fact that objects exist in the world. Objects have the power to constrain our actions and thoughts, though the norms for these thoughts lie in the public, social world. -/- Values may be decried or defended, praised or blamed, but in a world that strives for a modicum of reason, values, too, must be reasoned. Critical assessment of the values that play a role in scientific research is as much a part of doing good science as interpreting data. (shrink)

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... (shrink)

Proponents of the value ladenness of science rely primarily on arguments from underdetermination or inductive risk, which share the premise that we should only consider values where the evidence runs out or leaves uncertainty; they adopt a criterion of lexical priority of evidence over values. The motivation behind lexical priority is to avoid reaching conclusions on the basis of wishful thinking rather than good evidence. This is a real concern, however, that giving lexical priority to evidential considerations (...) over values is a mistake and unnecessary for avoiding the wishful thinking. Values have a deeper role to play in science. (shrink)

These are some of the central questions that Robert Proctor addresses in his study of the politics of modern science.

In this issue of Hypatia there is a consensus that science is not value-neutral and that cultural/political concerns enter into the epistemology, methodology and conclusions of scientific theory and practice. In future dialogues the question that needs to be further addressed is the precise role political concerns should play in the formulation of a feminist theory and practice of science.

How to deal with non-epistemic values in science presents a pressing problem for science and society as well as for philosophers of science. In recent years, accounts of democratizing science have been proposed as a possible solution to this. By providing a case study on the establishment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy comment: Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services comment: (IPBES), I argue that such accounts run into a problem when values are embedded in (...) the general scientific and societal setup to such an extent that they shape the terrain upon which such a democratization needs to take place. I introduce the notion of particularities as manifestations of values in science and state a problem of particularity, posed by the ways in which the interactive dimension of particularities interferes with democratic procedures for resolving value judgements in science. As a possible remedy, I propose enriching accounts of democratizing science by agonistic theories of democracy. (shrink)

Book Review of Current Controversies in Values and Science, Kevin C. Elliott and Daniel Steel (Editors), Routledge, 2017.

Understanding science requires appreciating the values it presupposes and its social context. Both the values that scientists hold and their social context can affect scientific communication. Philosophers of science have recently begun studying scientific communication, especially as it relates to public policy. Some have proposed “guiding principles for communicating scientific findings” to promote trust and objectivity. This paper contributes to this line of research in a novel way using behavioural experimentation. We report results from three experiments (...) testing judgments about the trustworthiness, competence and objectivity of scientists. More specifically, we tested whether such judgments are affected by three factors: consulting or not consulting nonscientists, conducting research under a restrictive or non-restrictive governmental communication policy, and the source of a lab’s funding (i.e., government funding, private funding, or a combination of the two). We found that each of these factors affects ordinary judgments of trustworthiness, competence and objectivity. These findings support several recommendations that could help improve scientific communication and communication policies. (shrink)

This book offers an account of how values play an important role within scientific practices, and how this account illuminates many ethical issues that arise concerning scientific practices and applications.

In the debate on the ethics of the non-medical use of pharmaceuticals for cognitive performance enhancement in healthy individuals there is a clear division between those who view “cognitive enhancement” as ethically unproblematic and those who see such practices as fraught with ethical problems. Yet another, more subtle issue, relates to the relevance and quality of the contribution of scholarly bioethics to this debate. More specifically, how have various forms of speculation, anticipatory ethics, and methods to predict scientific trends and (...) societal responses augmented or diminished this contribution? In this paper, we use the discussion of the ethics of cognitive enhancement to explore the positive and negative contribution of speculation in bioethics scholarship. First, we review and discuss how speculation has relied on different sets of assumptions regarding the non-medical use of stimulants, namely: terminology and framing; scientific aspects such as efficacy and safety; estimates of prevalence and consequent normalization; and the need for normative reflection and regulatory guidelines. Second, three methodological guideposts are proposed to alleviate some of the pitfalls of speculation: acknowledge assumptions more explicitly and identify the value attributed to assumptions; validate assumptions with interdisciplinary literature; and adopt a broad perspective to promote more comprehensive reflection. We conclude that, through the examination of the controversy about cognitive enhancement, we can employ these methodological guideposts to enhance the value of contributions from bioethics and minimize potential epistemic and practical pitfalls in this case and perhaps in other areas of bioethical debate. (shrink)

Philosophers have recently argued, against a prevailing orthodoxy, that standards of knowledge partly depend on a subject’s interests; the more is at stake for the subject, the less she is in a position to know. This view, which is dubbed “Pragmatic Encroachment” has historical and conceptual connections to arguments in philosophy of science against the received model of science as value free. I bring the two debates together. I argue that Pragmatic Encroachment and the model of value-laden (...) class='Hi'>science reinforce each other. Drawing on Douglas’ argument about the indispensability of value judgments in science, and psychological evidence about people’s inability to objectively reason about what they care about, I introduce a novel argument for Pragmatic Encroachment. (shrink)

It is now commonly held that values play a role in scientific judgment, but many arguments for that conclusion are limited. First, many arguments do not show that values are, strictly speaking, indispensable. The role of values could in principle be filled by a random or arbitrary decision. Second, many arguments concern scientific theories and concepts which have obvious practical consequences, thus suggesting or at least leaving open the possibility that abstruse sciences without such a connection could (...) be value-free. Third, many arguments concern the role values play in inferring from evidence, thus taking evidence as given. This paper argues that these limitations do not hold in general. There are values involved in every scientific judgment. They cannot even conceivably be replaced by a coin toss, they arise as much for exotic as for practical sciences, and they are at issue as much for observation as for explicit inference. (shrink)

Protagonists in the so-called Science Wars differ most markedly in their views about the role of values in science and what makes science valuable. Scientists and philosophers of science have traditionally considered the principal aims of science to be explanation and application. Only cognitive values should influence what is taken to be explanatory. Social and political values affect the priority assigned to various scientific problems and the ways in which scientific results are (...) applied. Ethical considerations may be brought to bear on the treatment of human and animal subjects, and the manner in which scientific results are communicated. Recent critiques of science allege that the content of scientific explanations reflects the dominant ideology and interests of scientists and their patrons. Instead of calling for more value neutrality, some now urge that science take as a principal aim the emancipation of oppressed subcultures. Not only should progressive political values be allowed to set the problems attempted, they also should be used to constrain the types of answers which are pursued. Since scientific knowledge is constructed by us, we should take responsibility for its content. This paper argues that the project of Emancipationist science is impractical and self-defeating. There is good reason to believe that there would be unresolvable political disputes concerning which kinds of scientific theories are truly emancipiatory. Furthermore, just as placebos cease to work when recognized as such, so would a science known to be constrained by political considerations lose its special epistemic authority. (shrink)

Recent efforts to argue that nonepistemic values have a legitimate role to play in assessing scientific models, theories, and hypotheses typically either reject the distinction between epistemic and nonepistemic values or incorporate nonepistemic values only as a secondary consideration for resolving epistemic uncertainty. Given that scientific representations can legitimately be evaluated not only based on their fit with the world but also with respect to their fit with the needs of their users, we show in two case (...) studies that nonepistemic values can play a legitimate role as factors that override epistemic considerations in assessing scientific representations for practical purposes. (shrink)

Exploring the role of values in scientific inquiry, Hugh Lacey examines the nature and meaning of values, and looks at challenges to the view, posed by postmodernists, feminists, radical ecologists, Third-World advocates and religious fundamentalists, that science is value free. He also focuses on discussions of 'development', especially in Third World countries. This paperback edition includes a new preface.

We argue that the analysis of cognitive attitudes should play a central role in developing more sophisticated accounts of the proper roles for values in science. First, we show that the major recent efforts to delineate appropriate roles for values in science would be strengthened by making clearer distinctions among cognitive attitudes. Next, we turn to a specific example and argue that a more careful account of the distinction between the attitudes of belief and acceptance can (...) contribute to a better understanding of the proper roles for values in a case study from paleoanthropology. (shrink)

Philosophers of science have come to accept that contextual values can play unavoidable and desirable roles in science. This has raised concerns about the need to distinguish legitimate and illegitimate value influences in scientific inquiry. I discuss here four such concerns: epistemic distortion, value imposition, undermining of public trust in science, and the use of objectionable values. I contend that preserving epistemic integrity and avoiding value imposition provide good reasons to attempt to distinguish between legitimate (...) and illegitimate influences of values in science. However, the trust and the objectionable values concerns constitute no good reason for demarcation criteria. (shrink)

In recent years, many philosophers of science have rejected the “value-free ideal” for science, arguing that non-epistemic values have a legitimate role to play in scientific inquiry. However, this philosophical position raises the question of how to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate influences of values in science. In this paper, we argue that those seeking to address this “new” demarcation problem can benefit by drawing lessons from the “old” demarcation problem, in which philosophers tried to (...) find a way of distinguishing between science and non-science. Many of those who worked on this problem ultimately found that efforts to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for defining science failed, and most concluded that the best solution to the problem was to characterize scientific hypotheses, theories, and research programs in terms of some common norms. We suggest that those seeking to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate value influences on science would do well to adopt a similar approach. Rather than attempting to establish necessary and sufficient conditions for identifying appropriate value influences, it will be more fruitful to evaluate scientific activities based on their adherence to a set of epistemic and ethical norms that can be implemented in scientific practice by means of rules, conventions, policies, and procedures. (shrink)

The role of values in the scientific process is widely debated. But evidence and values cannot be neatly separated. Instead, values infuse the entire scientific process, starting with the choice of research questions. Research avenues are selected based on prior beliefs about the workings of the world. In fact, informally assigned prior probabilities and normalizing constants play an essential role in distinguishing causes from correlations and ignoring irrelevant associations that would otherwise be suggested by raw data. But (...) since these initial probabilities often have a heterogeneous pedigree – often not all that went into their formation is known or knowable – it becomes difficult to cleanly separate evidence from values. At the same time, this reality does not undermine science’s unique status in generating knowledge. This is because it is not the evidence per se generated by science, but rather the method by which science generates it, that justifies science’s privileged role. (shrink)

This text attempts to show why the academic split between ethics and social sciences has been disastrous and argues that advances in vigour and sensitivity are made possible by closing this artificial divide.

In this paper I will propose six principles governing the proper role of moral and social values in the conduct of scientific investigation. I offer them for your consideration, and hope that together we can sharpen their formulation, explore their implications and test their acceptability. In making my proposals I draw considerably from my recent books, Valores e Atividade Científica (VAC, Lacey 1988) and Is Science Value Free? Values and Scientific Understanding (SVF, Lacey 1999a). The detailed argument, (...) and elaboration of the technical notions that I use are to be found in them (and summarized in Lacey 1999c). The sketch of the argument that I offer here is intended to display the motivation behind the proposed principles. (shrink)

My intention is to cast light on the characteristics of epistemic or fundamental research (in contrast to application-oriented research). I contrast a Baconian notion of objectivity, expressing a correspondence of the views of scientists to the facts, with a pluralist notion, involving a critical debate between conflicting approaches. These conflicts include substantive hypotheses or theories but extend to values as well. I claim that a plurality of epistemic values serves to accomplish a non-Baconian form of objectivity that is (...) apt to preserve most of the intuitions tied to the objectivity of science. For instance, pluralism is the only way to cope with the challenge of preference bias. Furthermore, the plurality of epistemic values cannot be substantially reduced by exploring the empirical success of scientific theories distinguished in light of particular such values. However, in addition to pluralism at the level of theories and value-commitments alike, scientific research is also characterized by a joint striving for consensus which I trace back to a shared epistemic attitude. This attitude manifests itself, e.g., in the willingness of scientists to subject their claims to empirical scrutiny and to respect rational argument. This shared epistemic attitude is embodied in rules adopted by the scientific community concerning general principles of dealing with knowledge claims. My contention is that pluralism and consensus formation can be brought into harmony by placing them at different levels of consideration: at the level of scientific reasoning and at the level of social conventions regarding how to deal with claims put forward within the scientific community. (shrink)

Philosophical work on values in science is held back by widespread ambiguity about how values bear on sci entific choices. Here, I disambiguate several ways in which a choice can be value-laden and show that this disambiguation has the potential to solve and dissolve philosophical problems about values in science. First, I characterize four ways in which values relate to choices: values can motivate, justify, cause, or be impacted by the choices we make. (...) Next, I put my proposed taxonomy to work, using it to clarify one version of the argument from inductive risk. The claim that non-epistemic values must play a role in scientific choices that run inductive risk makes most sense as a claim about values being needed to justify such choices. The argument from inductive risk is not unique: many philosophical arguments about values in science can be more clearly understood and assessed by paying close attention to how values and choices are related. (shrink)

This essay critically examines a questionable presupposition of contemporary science—that science is an instrumental means to human ends and as such is a value- neutral project. According to this presupposition, the responsibility for the ethical evaluation of science concerns only the uses to which science is put by society and thus does not belong properly to the scientific profession. This view, which C. P. Snow called “the myth of ethical neutrality,” is critiqued along ethical, philosophical, and (...) theological axes of analysis. Once we recognize that science is essentially a form of power, it becomes clear that science is morally ambiguous because the power over nature that science enables contains the potential for domination over humanity. From the Christian perspective, which holds that all worldly power is “fallen,” it is evident that science also is in need of being “ransomed” from evil uses and reoriented toward the priorities of God’s Kingdom. Accordingly, to be responsible science must be accountable to transcendent values and must be in dialogue with other disciplines, including ethics, philosophy, and theology. (shrink)

This is an important book precisely because there is none other quite like it.

This chapter will develop and apply ideas drawn from and inspired by Dewey’s work on science and democracy to the context of international relations (IR). I will begin with Dewey’s views on the nature of democracy, which lead us into his philosophy of science. I will show that scientific and policy inquiry are inextricably related processes, and that they both have special requirements in a democratic context. There are some challenges applying these ideas to the IR case, but (...) these challenges can be surmounted. To illustrate the fruitfulness of this Deweyan approach, I will end by showing that it provides an interesting new take on a major international crisis of our day: global climate change. (shrink)

Previous philosophical work on distrust in science has argued that understanding public distrust in science and scientific interventions requires that we pay careful attention not only to epistemic considerations (that is, beliefs about science), but also to values, and the emotional contexts in which assessments of scientific credibility are made. This is likely to be a truncated list of relevant factors for understanding trust/distrust, but these are certainly key areas of concern. The aim of this paper (...) is not to further innumerate the list of relevant factors. Rather, it is to map the ways that these key areas (beliefs, values, and emotions) are related to each other. These are not distinct categories, but rather they interact, making our picture of distrust more complicated than we might otherwise imagine. This discussion will take place in the context of resistance to medical interventions. Notably, Ebola interventions in West Africa, HIV/AIDS testing in South Africa, and vaccines across the world. (shrink)

I want to begin by sharing an experience working alongside a team of scientists dedicated to studying coastal fog. Two years ago, experts in coastal ecology, meteorology, atmospheric chemistry, and geography recognized the need to initiate conversation between the diverse disciplines that investigate fog. Although fog had long received attention from myriad sciences, coastal fog was yet to receive the sustained investigation that these scientists believed it warranted. Coastal fog is a strong candidate for such investigation; not only is fog (...) implicated in a number of socially relevant processes, such as agriculture.. (shrink)

In this paper I will propose six principles governing the proper role of moral and social values in the conduct of scientific investigation. I offer them for your consideration, and hope that together we can sharpen their formulation, explore their implications and test their acceptability. In making my proposals I draw considerably from my recent books, Valores e Atividade Científica (VAC, Lacey 1988) and Is Science Value Free? Values and Scientific Understanding (SVF, Lacey 1999a). The detailed argument, (...) and elaboration of the technical notions that I use are to be found in them (and summarized in Lacey 1999c). The sketch of the argument that I offer here is intended to display the motivation behind the proposed principles. (shrink)

The understanding that comes with scientific explanation is regarded as one of the central epistemic aims of science. In earlier work I have argued that scientists achieve understanding of phenomen...