A Joint Online Symposium presented by CVMST and SRPoiSE

Missed our Joint Online Symposium presented by CVMST and SRPoiSE? Want to view the talks again? Visit our Youtube channel for a series of four new videos featuring the talks presented at the Symposium: https://www.youtube.com/c/CenterForValuesUTD

On Wednesday, June 2, 2021, from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm CST, The Center for Values and The Consortium for Socially Relevant Philosophy of/in Science and Engineering will host a joint online Symposium.

Invited Speakers

Program of the Symposium

Abstracts

Registration and Meeting Links

Invited Speakers

The following invited speakers will present their work during the Symposium:

Kathryn Plaisance, University of Waterloo, Canada

Kathryn Plaisance is an Associate Professor in Knowledge Integration, cross-appointed to Philosophy, at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Her research interests include engaged philosophy of science, philosophy of the human behavioral sciences, interdisciplinary collaboration, interactional expertise, and diversity in teams. She recently completed a multi-year project on “Increasing the Impact of Philosophy of Science in Scientific Domains,” which used a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods to study the relationship between philosophy of science and STEM disciplines. Research arising from this project has been published in Philosophy of Science, Synthese, and Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science.

Kevin C. Elliott, Michigan State University

Kevin C. Elliott is a Professor of Philosophy with joint appointments across several units at Michigan State University. His scholarship operates at the intersection of the philosophy of science, research ethics, and environmental ethics, with a focus on the roles that ethical and social values play in research on environmental pollution. He is the author or editor of several books on these issues, including Is a Little Pollution Good for You? Incorporating Societal Values in Environmental Research and A Tapestry of Values: An Introduction to Values in Science, both published by Oxford University Press.

Morgan K. Thompson, University of Bielefeld,Germany

Morgan Thompson is a postdoctoral researcher at Bielefeld University. Her work focuses on the role of values in the operationalization and explication of concepts in science and medicine. She also works on identifying the causes of underrepresentation of women and Black students in philosophy.

Sindhuja Bhakthavatsalam, California State University, Northridge

Due to personal circumstances, Dr. Bhakthavatsalam could not join us today.

Sindhuja Bhakthavatsalam earned a PhD in Philosophy and Science Studies from UC San Diego in 2015 and has since been an Assistant Professor at California State University, Northridge. She is interested in the general philosophy of science, particularly debates around scientific realism, theory choice, and values in science. She also works on issues at the interface of philosophy of science and science education.

Paul L. Franco, University of Washington

Paul L. Franco is an Associate Teaching Professor (beginning Autumn 2021) in the department of philosophy at the University of Washington. He has teaching and research interests in the history of analytic philosophy, especially the history of philosophy of science and its relationship to linguistic philosophy, and in philosophy of science, especially values and scientific communication.

Program of the Symposium

Abstracts

Morgan Thompson
University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany

Values in Measures of Racial Discrimination in Public Health Research

Researchers in public health are interested in measuring the impact of racism on health, but in order to do so, they must choose among different measures of racial discrimination or even related measures of stress. I explore how epistemic and ethical values might play a role in these decisions. In particular, decisions about which measure to use involve different assumptions relating to two problems: the attributional ambiguity problem and the intersectional experiences problem. This project contributes to a larger literature demonstrating the relevance of value-laden research choices that influence what evidence can serve as the evidential basis for claims.

Talk canceled. Sindhuja Bhakthavatsalam
California State University, Northridge

A Virtue Epistemological Rejection of the Value-Free Ideal.

In this talk, I bolster challenges to the value-free ideal with arguments based on virtue epistemology. First, I argue that failing to recognize the presence of bad (e.g. racist/ sexist) values in science and/or being closed to corrective (e.g. feminist) values – point to various epistemic vices ranging from promoting epistemic injustice, closed-mindedness, and/or willful ignorance. Second, the predominant rationale for the inclusion of values in science is that science is inextricably embedded in society and hence should be concerned with social/ethical consequences. For instance, the argument from inductive risk goes that the amount of evidence needed for accepting/ rejecting a hypothesis depends on the social costs of false positives/false negatives. I argue that the stakes are not just ethical, but also epistemological. A vast portion of today’s science involves knowledge production that is expressly meant for application in some social domain, and the goal to produce such domain-specific knowledge is epistemic. Given all this, it would be epistemically irresponsible for a scientist to either – as Richard Jeffrey (1956) suggested – not accept or reject hypotheses, or – as Isaac Levi (1960) suggested – to stick to the “canons of inference” and exclude the very relevant social factors.

Matthew J. Brown
The University of Texas at Dallas

Expert Authority & Autonomy Epistemic Anarchism or Strong Accountability

Our understanding of scientific expertise involves an unacceptable tension. On the one hand, we accord science and scientific experts a high degree of authority in public matters; they have significant influence over policymaking, litigation, education, and regulation. On the other hand, we provide scientists with a high degree of autonomy; we resist attempts to “politicize” science. Other public institutions in democratic societies that carry authority are not autonomous, but publicly accountable. Autonomous institutions and citizens are independent and accorded no special authority in the public sphere, beyond the authority of each citizen. The special status of science is supposed to be explained by its special objectivity and impartiality. However, recent work in philosophy of science and other fields have shown that science cannot and should not be value-free and impartial. As Heather Douglas pointed out a decade ago, the combination of authority and autonomy that science enjoys is thus intolerable in a democratic society. I will argue that this situation presents a dilemma for our understanding of the role of experts in society, where each horn of the dilemma is problematic. One option is an epistemic version of philosophical anarchism, according to which we attribute no epistemic authority to scientific experts in virtue of their expertise. This view, when considered, has been treated as obviously untenable. On the other side, those who recognize that science is value-laden nonetheless have tended to be committed to the ineliminability of expert judgment from decisions to accept or reject policy-relevant scientific hypotheses, or more broadly, from value-laden policy decisions to which scientific information is highly relevant. According to the ineliminability thesis, value judgments cannot be deferred or analytically separated from the process of science itself, and science-based policy cannot leave responsibility for value judgment solely to the policymakers. I will show that this option requires significant changes to the relationship between science and the public, making science much more publicly accountable, or under much greater social control, than previously thought. Our options are thus epistemic anarchism or a very strong form of public accountability for science.

Paul L. Franco
University of Washington

Values in Scientific Communication

In this talk, I first canvas recent reasons that have been given for why philosophers of science interested in values in science should look at scientific communication. Then, I show how one framework I and others have used for thinking about scientific communication, speech act theory, connects the inductive risk and aims approaches to values in science. Finally, I consider some possible norms of scientific communication with attention paid to the social and political context in which it takes place. Some examples I’ll probably explore and hope the audience can help me think through in Q&A include communication around mask guidelines in the US and about hypotheses concerning COVID-19’s origins.

Kathryn Plaisance
University of Waterloo, Canada
Kevin C. Elliott
Michigan State University

A Framework for Analyzing Broadly Engaged Philosophy of Science

Philosophers of science are increasingly interested in engaging with scientific communities, policymakers, and members of the public; however, the nature of this engagement has not been systematically examined. Instead of delineating a specific kind of engaged philosophy of science, as previous accounts have done, this talk draws on literature from outside the discipline to develop a framework for analyzing different forms of broadly engaged philosophy of science according to two key dimensions: social interaction and epistemic integration. Clarifying the many forms of engagement available to philosophers of science can advance future scholarship on engagement and promote more strategic engagement efforts.

Registration and Meeting Links

To participate via Webex, you must register by following this link to Webex Registration. You will receive an email with the link to participate in the symposium–please make sure to check your spam folder as the Webex emails sometimes end up there! We will also broadcast the symposium talks via Facebook Live at the Center for Values Facebook Page.