About this topic
Summary

What should we expect and demand of experts, given the authority vested in them and the gravity of decisions in areas such as science and technology policy? Risk-management is not a value-free science, and experts are not immune from damaging bias, from vested interests, or from error in their projections of benefits and risks in the application of science and technology to the real world. The concept of inductive risk concerns the seriousness of potential errors and accidents, or more generally of ‘getting it wrong’ in any inductive context of inquiry. The study of inductive risk involves the interplay between applied science/technology and different kinds of values (epistemic, but also moral, social, economic, etc.). This involves how risks are calculated and assigned, but also more generally how decisions are, and ought to be made. It can involve the relationships between scientific experts, business interests, policy-makers, and citizen stakeholders in decisions and policy-making that carries risk for those affected. The study of inductive risk as defined by leading authors in this area shares with science studies, broadly construed, that science is a legitimate and pressing site of debate as long as its implications are relevant to the public, and to public policy-making.

Key works

The roles of values in expertise has been a question of great concern at least since The Public and its Problems, Dewey 1927. Expertise may be vitally important for effective public decision-making, yet experts need to be held responsible to the epistemic authority they wield, and to specific risks of the policies and decisions they advise. Inductive risk is a concept first applied in an article “Science and Human Values” by Hempel 1965 which helps encapsulate a great deal of debate about the relationship between epistemic and non-epistemic values in science. Hempel allowed that because no evidence can establish a hypothesis with certainty, the acceptance of a hypothesis “carries with it the ‘inductive risk’” (92) that it may turn out to be incorrect. While articulating inductive risk as the risk of error in accepting or rejecting a hypothesis, Hempel’s view largely aligned with others including Levi (1962) and McMullen (1983), that value judgments attached to various outcomes or “utilities” in the application of science may be of practical and moral concern, but are not part of science proper: “the scientist is not called upon to make value judgments in their regard as part of his scientific work” (8). This view contrast with that of Richard Rudner (1953), that scientists qua scientists make value judgments. The insulation of scientific research from social values came under criticism from many in the latter half of the twentieth-century, as the “value-free” conception of science and scientific objectivity. Numerous post-positivist and feminist thinkers urged a re-thinking of that conception and of the cognitive/social value distinction (Rooney 1992; Longino 1990; Machamer and Douglas 1999; Intemann 2005; Mayo and Spanos (eds.) 2009; Elliott and Richards (eds.) 2017)). In an early paper in what would become voluminous work on inductive risk, “Inductive Risk and Values in Science”, Douglas 2000 argues that non-epistemic consequences of error “can and should be considered in the internal stages of science: choice of methodology, characterization of data, and interpretation of results” (559).  Since inductive risk arises whenever knowledge is inductively based, and there are often clear or potentially important consequences of getting it wrong, discussions of inductive risk become a hub for concerns with technology policy. In the article “Science, Values, and Citizens”, Douglas 2017 maintains that in societally relevant areas of science, a focus on inductive risk "opens the door to social and ethical values in the assessment of what counts as sufficient evidence for a claim” (93). Stephen John (2015) defends disentangling and excluding non-epistemic values in science; the argument from inductive risk does not undercut a rightly-conceived value-free conception of science. While the entanglements and attempted disentanglements of science and social values remains a matter of vigorous debate, numerous authors presently utilize the concept of inductive risk not only in regard to policy procedures, but also in articulating the different avenues for legitimate contestation of scientific claims, and in stimulating timely and more robust, multi-directional conversations over science and values.

[BROKEN REFERENCE: HEMSAHw]#DOUIRA
Introductions

Biddle, J.B. and Kukla, R. (2017), The Geography of Epistemic Risk. In Exploring Inductive Risk: Case Studies of Values in Science, K.C. Elliott and T. Richards (eds.). Oxford: Oxford university Press.

Douglas, H. (2009), Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburg PA.

Elliott, Kevin C. (2013), Douglas on Values: From Indirect Roles to Multiple Goals, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 44 (3), 375-383.

Intemann, K. (2005), Feminism, Underdetermination, and Values in Science, Philosophy of Science, 72, 1001-1012.

Machamer, P. and Osbeck, L. (2004), The Social in the Epistemic. In Machamer, P. and Wolters, G. (eds.) Values, Science and Objectivity. University of Pittsburgh Press.

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180 found
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  1. A Risk-Based Regulatory Approach to Autonomous Weapon Systems.Alexander Blanchard, Claudio Novelli, Luciano Floridi & Mariarosaria Taddeo - manuscript
    International regulation of autonomous weapon systems (AWS) is increasingly conceived as an exercise in risk management. This requires a shared approach for assessing the risks of AWS. This paper presents a structured approach to risk assessment and regulation for AWS, adapting a qualitative framework inspired by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It examines the interactions among key risk factors—determinants, drivers, and types—to evaluate the risk magnitude of AWS and establish risk tolerance thresholds through a risk matrix informed by (...)
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  2. Aesthetic Values in Scientific Practice: Contemporary Debates.Milena Ivanova - manuscript
    Scientists often refer to their experiments, theories, images and instruments as beautiful and report that their scientific work is a source of aesthetic experiences. How do such aesthetic values affect scientific activities, and can aesthetic values play a cognitive role in science? In this chapter, I identify the different levels at which aesthetic values shape scientific products and processes, reflect on how philosophers have justified the cognitive role of such aesthetic values, and draw insights from recent discussions on the aesthetics (...)
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  3. Varying Evidential Standards as a Matter of Justice.Ahmad Elabbar - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
    The setting of evidential standards is a core practice of scientific assessment for policy. Persuaded by considerations of inductive risk, philosophers generally agree that the justification of evidential standards must appeal to non-epistemic values but debate whether the balance of non-epistemic reasons favours varying evidential standards versus maintaining fixed high evidential standards in assessment, as both sets of standards promote different and important political virtues of advisory institutions. In this paper, I adjudicate the evidential standards debate by developing a novel (...)
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  4. Risk and Precaution.Stephen John - forthcoming - Public Health Ethics: Key Concepts and Issues in Policy and Practice:67--84.
  5. A (Consequence Oriented) Critique of the Argument from Inductive Risk.Arnon Levy - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies.
    The argument from inductive risk (AIR) states that scientists should consider the consequences of hypotheses and methodological choices in the course of ongoing research. It has played a central role in the widespread retreat from the ideal of value-free science. The argument is motivated, to a significant extent, by the laudable concern to use science to better society. I argue that this concern, when taken seriously, tells against the idea that individual working scientists should consider social consequences. First, I show (...)
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  6. The Influence of Values on Medical Research.S. Andrew Schroeder - forthcoming - In Alex Broadbent, Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Medicine. Oxford University Press.
    Mainstream views of medical research tell us it should be a fact-based, value-free endeavor: what a scientist (or her funding source) wants or cares about should not influence her findings. At the same time, we also sometimes criticize medical research for failing to embody certain values, e.g. when we criticize pharmaceutical companies for largely ignoring the diseases that affect the global poor. This chapter seeks to reconcile these perspectives by distinguishing appropriate from inappropriate influences of values on medical research. It (...)
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  7. Fast Science.Jacob Stegenga - forthcoming - The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
    If scientists violate principles and practices of routine science to quickly develop interventions against catastrophic threats, they are engaged in what I call fast science. The magnitude, imminence, and plausibility of a threat justify engaging in and acting on fast science. Yet, that justification is incomplete. I defend two principles to assess fast science, which say: fast science should satisfy as much as possible the reliability-enhancing features of routine science, and the fast science developing an intervention against a threat should (...)
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  8. For values in science: Assessing recent arguments for the ideal of value-free science.Matthew J. Brown - 2024 - Synthese 204 (4):1-31.
    There is a near consensus among philosophers of science whose research focuses on science and values that the ideal of value-free science is untenable, and that science not only is, but normatively must be, value-laden in some respect. The consensus is far from complete; with some regularity, defenses of the value-free ideal (VFI) as well as critiques of major arguments against the VFI surface in the literature. I review and respond to many of the recent defenses of the VFI and (...)
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  9. Valores na ciência e a perspectiva ecológica do conhecimento científico.Eros Carvalho - 2024 - In César Meurer, Ciência: epistemologia e ensino. Rio de Janeiro: Editora do PPG Filosofia da UFRRJ. pp. 250-281.
    A ideia de que a ciência — ou ao menos as atividades científicas que são consideradas as mais essenciais para a ciência — deve ser livre de valores é bastante difundida. Neste capítulo, vou discutir essa tese, normalmente entendida como um ideal de ciência. Na primeira seção, introduzo alguns conceitos e distinções que são importantes para entender essa tese, como a diferença entre valores cognitivos e não-cognitivos. Na segunda seção, discuto o papel dos valores na seleção de problemas e na (...)
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  10. Journalism and Public Trust in Science.Vanessa Schipani - 2024 - Synthese 204 (56):1-24.
    Journalists are often the adult public’s central source of scientific information, which means that their reporting shapes the relationship the public has with science. Yet philosophers of science largely ignore journalistic communication in their inquiries about trust in science. This paper aims to help fill this gap in research by comparing journalistic norm conflicts that arose when reporting on COVID-19 and tobacco, among other policy-relevant scientific topics. I argue that the public’s image of scientists – as depositories of indisputable, value-free (...)
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  11. The Risks of Evolutionary Explanation.H. Clark Barrett - 2023 - In Agathe du Crest, Martina Valković, André Ariew, Hugh Desmond, Philippe Huneman & Thomas A. C. Reydon, Evolutionary Thinking Across Disciplines: Problems and Perspectives in Generalized Darwinism. Springer Verlag. pp. 29752211-31555011.
    Evolutionary explanations of behavior are special in that they involve both proximate and ultimate components. Proximately, evolutionary accounts posit mechanisms that generate observed patterns of behavior. At the ultimate level, evolutionary accounts explain the existence of these proximate mechanisms via evolutionary processes such as selection or drift acting in the past. Does positing or accepting such explanations carry any risks? Here I consider two kinds of risk, epistemic and ethical. Epistemic risk is the risk of being wrong about a matter (...)
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  12. Rethinking the Conceptual Space for Science in Society after the VFI.T. Y. Branch & Heather Douglas - 2023 - Philosophy of Science.
    Replacing the value-free ideal (VFI) for science requires attention to the broader understanding of how science in society should function. In public spaces, science needed to project the VFI in norms for science advising, science education, and science communication. This resulted in the independent science advisor model and a focus on science literacy for science education and communication. Attending to these broader implications of the VFI which structure science and society relationships is crucial if we are to properly replace the (...)
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  13. The Validity of the Argument from Inductive Risk.Matthew J. Brown & Jacob Stegenga - 2023 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 53 (2):187-190.
    Havstad (2022) argues that the argument from inductive risk for the claim that non-epistemic values have a legitimate role to play in the internal stages of science is deductively valid. She also defends its premises and thus soundness. This is, as far as we are aware, the best reconstruction of the argument from inductive risk in the existing literature. However, there is a small flaw in this reconstruction of the argument from inductive risk which appears to render the argument invalid. (...)
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  14. It Takes a Village to Trust Science: Towards a (Thoroughly) Social Approach to Public Trust in Science.Gabriele Contessa - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (7):2941-2966.
    In this paper, I distinguish three general approaches to public trust in science, which I call the individual approach, the semi-social approach, and the social approach, and critically examine their proposed solutions to what I call the problem of harmful distrust. I argue that, despite their differences, the individual and the semi-social approaches see the solution to the problem of harmful distrust as consisting primarily in trying to persuade individual citizens to trust science and that both approaches face two general (...)
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  15. Ethical assessments and mitigation strategies for biases in AI-systems used during the COVID-19 pandemic.Alicia De Manuel, Janet Delgado, Parra Jonou Iris, Txetxu Ausín, David Casacuberta, Maite Cruz Piqueras, Ariel Guersenzvaig, Cristian Moyano, David Rodríguez-Arias, Jon Rueda & Angel Puyol - 2023 - Big Data and Society 10 (1).
    The main aim of this article is to reflect on the impact of biases related to artificial intelligence (AI) systems developed to tackle issues arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, with special focus on those developed for triage and risk prediction. A secondary aim is to review assessment tools that have been developed to prevent biases in AI systems. In addition, we provide a conceptual clarification for some terms related to biases in this particular context. We focus mainly on nonracial biases (...)
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  16. Are Algorithms Value-Free?Gabbrielle M. Johnson - 2023 - Journal Moral Philosophy 21 (1-2):1-35.
    As inductive decision-making procedures, the inferences made by machine learning programs are subject to underdetermination by evidence and bear inductive risk. One strategy for overcoming these challenges is guided by a presumption in philosophy of science that inductive inferences can and should be value-free. Applied to machine learning programs, the strategy assumes that the influence of values is restricted to data and decision outcomes, thereby omitting internal value-laden design choice points. In this paper, I apply arguments from feminist philosophy of (...)
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  17. Sisyphean Science: Why Value Freedom is Worth Pursuing.Tarun Menon & Jacob Stegenga - 2023 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 13 (48):1-24.
    The value-free ideal in science has been criticised as both unattainable and undesirable. We argue that it can be defended as a practical principle guiding scientific research even if the unattainability and undesirability of a value-free end-state are granted. If a goal is unattainable, then one can separate the desirability of accomplishing the goal from the desirability of pursuing it. We articulate a novel value-free ideal, which holds that scientists should act as if science should be value-free, and we argue (...)
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  18. The Harraseeket Conference – Revisiting systems for ethics oversight of research with human participants.Stephen J. Rosenfeld, George Shaler & Ross Hickey - 2023 - Research Ethics 19 (3):231-249.
    The current system of ethical oversight in the United States is based on Institutional Review Board (IRB) review. The system was established in response to well-known and egregious mistreatment of subjects in both biomedical and social and behavioral research. In the decades since the research regulations were enacted, reaction to the burden of IRB oversight has led the system to focus on compliance and limit its active oversight disproportionately to studies that could present the risk of physical harm. At the (...)
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  19. Valeurs Dans la Representation Scientifique.Quentin Ruyant - 2023 - Lato Sensu: Revue de la Société de Philosophie des Sciences 10 (1):24-38.
    Le but de cet article est d'examiner le rôle joué par les valeurs dans les activités de représentation en science, notamment la construction ou utilisation de modèles, en distinguant représentation concrète et abstraite. Un modèle hiérarchique est proposé. La conclusion est que l'influence des valeurs sociales dans la représentation scientifique dépend du niveau d'abstraction considéré, et qu'elle n'est problématique que quand des valeurs locales sont considérées pour évaluer des représentations plus générales.
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  20. Value-Free ideal is an epistemic ideal: an objection to the argument from inductive risk.Hossein Sheykh-Rezaee & Hamed Bikaraan-Behesht - 2023 - Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology 27 (1):137-163.
    Arguing from inductive risk, Heather Douglas tried to show that the ideal of value-free science is completely unfounded. The argument has been widely acknowledged to be a strong argument against the ideal. In this paper, beginning with an analysis of the concept of an ideal, we argue that the value-free ideal is an epistemic ideal rather than a practical or ethical ideal. Then, we aim to show that the argument from inductive risk cannot be employed against the value-free ideal as (...)
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  21. The Difference-to-Inference Model for Values in Science.Jacob Stegenga & Tarun Menon - 2023 - Res Philosophica 100 (4):423-447.
    The value-free ideal for science holds that values should not influence the core features of scientific reasoning. We defend the difference-to-inference model of value-permeation, which holds that value-permeation in science is problematic when values make a difference to the inferences made about a hypothesis. This view of value-permeation is superior to existing views, and it suggests a corresponding maxim—namely, that scientists should strive to eliminate differences to inference. This maxim is the basis of a novel value-free ideal for science. -/- (...)
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  22. Philosophical aspects of probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA): a critical review.Luca Zanetti & Daniele Chiffi - 2023 - Natural Hazards 1:1-20.
    The goal of this paper is to review and critically discuss the philosophical aspects of probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA). Given that estimates of seismic hazard are typically riddled with uncertainty, diferent epistemic values (related to the pursuit of scientifc knowledge) compete in the selection of seismic hazard models, in a context infuenced by non-epistemic values (related to practical goals and aims) as well. We frst distinguish between the diferent types of uncertainty in PSHA. We claim that epistemic and nonepistemic (...)
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  23. Risk-limited indulgent permissivism.Guy Axtell - 2022 - Synthese 200 (4):1-15.
    This paper argues for a view described as risk-limited indulgent permissivism. This term may be new to the epistemology of disagreement literature, but the general position denoted has many examples. The paper argues for the need for an epistemology for domains of controversial views, and for the advantages of endorsing a risk-limited indulgent permissivism across these domains. It takes a double-edge approach in articulating for the advantages of interpersonal belief permissivism that is yet risk-limited: Advantages are apparent both in comparison (...)
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  24. On Predicting Recidivism: Epistemic Risk, Tradeoffs, and Values in Machine Learning.Justin B. Biddle - 2022 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 52 (3):321-341.
    Recent scholarship in philosophy of science and technology has shown that scientific and technological decision making are laden with values, including values of a social, political, and/or ethical character. This paper examines the role of value judgments in the design of machine-learning systems generally and in recidivism-prediction algorithms specifically. Drawing on work on inductive and epistemic risk, the paper argues that ML systems are value laden in ways similar to human decision making, because the development and design of ML systems (...)
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  25. Clinical Decisions Using AI Must Consider Patient Values.Jonathan Birch, Kathleen A. Creel, Abhinav K. Jha & Anya Plutynski - 2022 - Nature Medicine 28:229–232.
    Built-in decision thresholds for AI diagnostics are ethically problematic, as patients may differ in their attitudes about the risk of false-positive and false-negative results, which will require that clinicians assess patient values.
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  26. Engaging with science, values, and society: introduction.Ingo Brigandt - 2022 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 52 (3):223-226.
    Philosophical work on science and values has come to engage with the concerns of society and of stakeholders affected by science and policy, leading to socially relevant philosophy of science and socially engaged philosophy of science. This special issue showcases instances of socially relevant philosophy of science, featuring contributions on a diversity of topics by Janet Kourany, Andrew Schroeder, Alison Wylie, Kristen Intemann, Joyce Havstad, Justin Biddle, Kevin Elliott, and Ingo Brigandt.
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  27. A Rawlsian Solution to the New Demarcation Problem.Frank Cabrera - 2022 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 52 (8):810-827.
    In the last two decades, a robust consensus has emerged among philosophers of science, whereby political, ethical, or social values must play some role in scientific inquiry, and that the ‘value-free ideal’ is thus a misguided conception of science. However, the question of how to distinguish, in a principled way, which values may legitimately influence science remains. This question, which has been dubbed the ‘new demarcation problem,’ has until recently received comparatively less attention from philosophers of science. In this paper, (...)
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  28. Inductive risk: does it really refute value-freedom?Markus Dressel - 2022 - Theoria 37 (2):181-207.
    The argument from inductive risk is considered to be one of the strongest challenges for value-free science. A great part of its appeal lies in the idea that even an ideal epistemic agent—the “perfect scientist” or “scientist qua scientist”—cannot escape inductive risk. In this paper, I scrutinize this ambition by stipulating an idealized Bayesian decision setting. I argue that inductive risk does not show that the “perfect scientist” must, descriptively speaking, make non-epistemic value-judgements, at least not in a way that (...)
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  29. Sensational Science, Archaic Hominin Genetics, and Amplified Inductive Risk.Joyce C. Havstad - 2022 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 52 (3):295-320.
    More than a decade of exacting scientific research involving paleontological fragments and ancient DNA has lately produced a series of pronouncements about a purportedly novel population of archaic hominins dubbed “the Denisova.” The science involved in these matters is both technically stunning and, socially, at times a bit reckless. Here I discuss the responsibilities which scientists incur when they make inductively risky pronouncements about the different relative contributions by Denisovans to genomes of members of apparent subpopulations of current humans. This (...)
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  30. Inconvenient Truth and Inductive Risk in Covid-19 Science.Eli I. Lichtenstein - 2022 - Philosophy of Medicine 3 (1):1-25.
    To clarify the proper role of values in science, focusing on controversial expert responses to Covid-19, this article examines the status of (in)convenient hypotheses. Polarizing cases like health experts downplaying mask efficacy to save resources for healthcare workers, or scientists dismissing “accidental lab leak” hypotheses in view of potential xenophobia, plausibly involve modifying evidential standards for (in)convenient claims. Societies could accept that scientists handle (in)convenient claims just like nonscientists, and give experts less political power. Or societies could hold scientists to (...)
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  31. The scope of inductive risk.P. D. Magnus - 2022 - Metaphilosophy 53 (1):17-24.
    The Argument from Inductive Risk (AIR) is taken to show that values are inevitably involved in making judgements or forming beliefs. After reviewing this conclusion, I pose cases which are prima facie counterexamples: the unreflective application of conventions, use of black-boxed instruments, reliance on opaque algorithms, and unskilled observation reports. These cases are counterexamples to the AIR posed in ethical terms as a matter of personal values. Nevertheless, it need not be understood in those terms. The values which load a (...)
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  32. William James on Risk, Efficacy, and Evidentialism.P. D. Magnus - 2022 - Episteme 19 (1):146-158.
    William James’ argument against William Clifford in The Will to Believe is often understood in terms of doxastic efficacy, the power of belief to influence an outcome. Although that is one strand of James’ argument, there is another which is driven by ampliative risk. The second strand of James’ argument, when applied to scientific cases, is tantamount to what is now called the Argument from Inductive Risk. Either strand of James’ argument is sufficient to rebut Clifford's strong evidentialism and show (...)
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  33. (1 other version)When Do Non-Epistemic Values Play an Epistemically Illegitimate Role in Science? How to Solve One Half of the New Demarcation Problem.Alexander Reutlinger - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 92:152-161.
    Solving the “new demarcation problem” requires a distinction between epistemically legitimate and illegitimate roles for non-epistemic values in science. This paper addresses one ‘half’ (i.e. a sub-problem) of the new demarcation problem articulated by the Gretchenfrage: What makes the role of a non-epistemic value in science epistemically illegitimate? I will argue for the Explaining Epistemic Errors (EEE) account, according to which the epistemically illegitimate role of a non-epistemic value is defined via an explanatory claim: the fact that an epistemic agent (...)
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  34. Thinking about Values in Science: Ethical versus Political Approaches.S. Andrew Schroeder - 2022 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 52 (3):246-255.
    Philosophers of science now broadly agree that doing good science involves making non-epistemic value judgments. I call attention to two very different normative standards which can be used to evaluate such judgments: standards grounded in ethics and standards grounded in political philosophy. Though this distinction has not previously been highlighted, I show that the values in science literature contain arguments of each type. I conclude by explaining why this distinction is important. Seeking to determine whether some value-laden determination meets substantive (...)
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  35. Beyond Value Sovereignty.Nicolas Silva - 2022 - Culturas Cientificas 3 (2):131-149.
    The following paper argues that issues in paradigmatic proposals for solving the new demarcation problem stem from absolutist assumptions about judgments of value legitimacy. Both the problem of uninformativeness (Larroulet Philippi 2020; Fernandez-Pinto 2014, 2015) and the problem of ambiguous judgments of cases (Hicks 2014; Intemann 2017) are explained by an absolutist pretension contained in one of the main aims of these proposals: providing criteria for differentiating legitimate from illegitimate uses of values, without qualification. After presenting the problems and showing (...)
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  36. Inductive Risk, Understanding, and Opaque Machine Learning Models.Emily Sullivan - 2022 - Philosophy of Science 89 (5):1065-1074.
    Under what conditions does machine learning (ML) model opacity inhibit the possibility of explaining and understanding phenomena? In this article, I argue that nonepistemic values give shape to the ML opacity problem even if we keep researcher interests fixed. Treating ML models as an instance of doing model-based science to explain and understand phenomena reveals that there is (i) an external opacity problem, where the presence of inductive risk imposes higher standards on externally validating models, and (ii) an internal opacity (...)
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  37. Epistemic interests and the objectivity of inquiry.Torsten Wilholt - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 91 (C):86-93.
    This paper advocates for making epistemic interests a central object of philosophical analysis in epistemology and philosophy of science. It is argued that the importance of epistemic interests derives from their fundamental importance for the notion of objectivity. Epistemic interests are defined as individuated by a set of objectives, each of which represents a dimension of the search for truth. Among these dimensions, specificity, sensitivity, and productivity are discussed in detail. It is argued that the relevance of productivity is often (...)
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  38. Value Incommensurability: Ethics, Risk. And Decision-Making.Henrik Andersson & Anders Herlitz (eds.) - 2021 - New York, NY: Routledge.
    Incommensurability is the impossibility to determine how two options relate to each other in terms of conventional comparative relations. This book features new research on incommensurability from philosophers who have shaped the field into what it is today, including John Broome, Ruth Chang and Wlodek Rabinowicz. The book covers four aspects relating to incommensurability. In the first part, the contributors synthesize research on the competing views of how to best explain incommensurability. Part II illustrates how incommensurability can help us deal (...)
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  39. Public Trust in Science: Exploring the Idiosyncrasy-Free Ideal.Marion Boulicault & S. Andrew Schroeder - 2021 - In Kevin Vallier & Michael Weber, Social Trust: Foundational and Philosophical Issues. Routledge.
    What makes science trustworthy to the public? This chapter examines one proposed answer: the trustworthiness of science is based at least in part on its independence from the idiosyncratic values, interests, and ideas of individual scientists. That is, science is trustworthy to the extent that following the scientific process would result in the same conclusions, regardless of the particular scientists involved. We analyze this "idiosyncrasy-free ideal" for science by looking at philosophical debates about inductive risk, focusing on two recent proposals (...)
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  40. The Descriptive, the Normative, and the Entanglement of Values in Science.Matthew J. Brown - 2021 - In Heather Douglas & Ted Richards, Science, Values, and Democracy: The 2016 Descartes Lectures. Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes, Arizona State University. pp. 51-65.
    Heather Douglas has helped to set the standard for twenty-first century discussions in philosophy of science on the topics of values in science and science in democracy. Douglas’s work has been part of a movement to bring the question of values in science back to center of the field and to focus especially on policy-relevant science. This first chapter, on the pervasive entanglement of science and values, includes an improved and definitive statement of the argument from inductive risk, which she (...)
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  41. What Does Good Science-Based Advice to Politics Look Like?Martin Carrier - 2021 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 53 (1):5-21.
    I address options for providing scientific policy advice and explore the relation between scientific knowledge and political, economic and moral values. I argue that such nonepistemic values are essential for establishing the significance of questions and the relevance of evidence, while, on the other hand, such social choices are the prerogative of society. This tension can be resolved by recognizing social values and identifying them as separate premises or as commissions while withholding commitment to them, and by elaborating a plurality (...)
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  42. Inductive risk in macroeconomics: Natural Rate Theory, monetary policy, and the Great Canadian Slump.Gabriele Contessa - 2021 - Economics and Philosophy 37 (3):353-375.
    This paper has two goals. The first is to fill a gap in the literature on inductive risk by exploring the relevance of the notion of inductive risk to macroeconomics and monetary policy. The second goal is to draw some general lessons about inductive risk from the case discussed. The most important of these lessons is that the notion of inductive risk is no less relevant to the relationship between the proximate and distal goals of policy than it is to (...)
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  43. On the mitigation of inductive risk.Gabriele Contessa - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (3):1-14.
    The last couple of decades have witnessed a renewed interest in the notion of inductive risk among philosophers of science. However, while it is possible to find a number of suggestions about the mitigation of inductive risk in the literature, so far these suggestions have been mostly relegated to vague marginal remarks. This paper aims to lay the groundwork for a more systematic discussion of the mitigation of inductive risk. In particular, I consider two approaches to the mitigation of inductive (...)
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  44. Wishful Intelligibility, Black Boxes, and Epidemiological Explanation.Marina DiMarco - 2021 - Philosophy of Science 88 (5):824-834.
    Epidemiological explanation often has a “black box” character, meaning the intermediate steps between cause and effect are unknown. Filling in black boxes is thought to improve causal inferences by making them intelligible. I argue that adding information about intermediate causes to a black box explanation is an unreliable guide to pragmatic intelligibility because it may mislead us about the stability of a cause. I diagnose a problem that I call wishful intelligibility, which occurs when scientists misjudge the limitations of certain (...)
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  45. How strong is the argument from inductive risk?Tobias Henschen - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (3):1-23.
    The argument from inductive risk, as developed by Rudner and others, famously concludes that the scientist qua scientist makes value judgments. The paper aims to show that trust in the soundness of the argument is overrated – that philosophers who endorse its conclusion fail to refute two of the most important objections that have been raised to its soundness: Jeffrey’s objection that the genuine task of the scientist is to assign probabilities to hypotheses, and Levi’s objection that the argument is (...)
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  46. Well-ordered science and public trust in science.Gürol Irzik & Faik Kurtulmus - 2021 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 19):4731-4748.
    Building, restoring and maintaining well-placed trust between scientists and the public is a difficult yet crucial social task requiring the successful cooperation of various social actors and institutions. Kitcher’s takes up this challenge in the context of liberal democratic societies by extending his ideal model of “well-ordered science” that he had originally formulated in his. However, Kitcher nowhere offers an explicit account of what it means for the public to invest epistemic trust in science. Yet in order to understand how (...)
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  47. Objectivity in Science.Stephen John - 2021 - Cambridge University Press.
    Objectivity is a key concept both in how we talk about science in everyday life and in the philosophy of science. This Element explores various ways in which recent philosophers of science have thought about the nature, value and achievability of objectivity. The first section explains the general trend in recent philosophy of science away from a notion of objectivity as a 'view from nowhere' to a focus on the relationship between objectivity and trust. Section 2 discusses the relationship between (...)
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  48. The epistemic consequences of pragmatic value-laden scientific inference.Adam P. Kubiak & Paweł Kawalec - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (2):1-26.
    In this work, we explore the epistemic import of the value-ladenness of Neyman-Pearson’s Theory of Testing Hypotheses by reconstructing and extending Daniel Steel’s argument for the legitimate influence of pragmatic values on scientific inference. We focus on how to properly understand N-P’s pragmatic value-ladenness and the epistemic reliability of N-P. We develop an account of the twofold influence of pragmatic values on N-P’s epistemic reliability and replicability. We refer to these two distinguished aspects as “direct” and “indirect”. We discuss the (...)
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  49. Is Technology Value-Neutral?Boaz Miller - 2021 - Science, Technology, and Human Values 46 (1):53-80.
    According to the Value-Neutrality Thesis, technology is morally and politically neutral, neither good nor bad. A knife may be put to bad use to murder an innocent person or to good use to peel an apple for a starving person, but the knife itself is a mere instrument, not a proper subject for moral or political evaluation. While contemporary philosophers of technology widely reject the VNT, it remains unclear whether claims about values in technology are just a figure of speech (...)
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  50. Call for Written evidence - Risk Assessment and Risk Planning.Marie Oldfield - 2021 - UK Government Risk Enquiry.
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