Listed below are the individuals who have agreed to speak along
with brief information about them and abstracts and full papers
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Wesley Salmon, University of Pittsburgh, Department of Philosophy
Wesley Salmon is University Professor Emeritus at University of Pittsburgh and author of numerous books and articles in the philosophy of science.
Abstract
Values in Science
A crucial feature of the problem of values in science hinges on the old-fashioned (to most philosophers, outmoded) distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification. I believe that distinction has been widely misunderstood, and that it has be abandonded for the wrong reasons. A major reason for this abandonment is that various philosophers (e.g. Kuhn) thought of justificati0on in terms of the hypothetical-deductive schema, which is severly defective. A much more satisfactory schema is Bayes' Theorem. If the distinction between the two contexts were viable, and if value issues could be located in the context of discovery, that would be philosophically interesting and scientifically important.
Elliott Sober, University of Wisconsin, Department of Philosophy
Elliott Sober is Hans Reichenbach Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin. He is the author of many books and articles, including The Nature of Selection (MIT, 1984) and Reconstructing the Past (MIT, 1991) which won the Latakos Award for best book in philosophy of science. The latter book deals extensively with the place of simplicity in scientific inference.
Abstract
Demystifying Simplicity
When scientists evaluate theories for their plausibility, one consideration that often gets invoked is simplicity. What is puzzling about this is that simplicity is valued, not just for aesthetic reasons or because simpler theories are easier to think about, but because simplicity is taken to be a "sign" of truth. Recent work in statistics has considerably demystified the role of simplicity in a broad class of inference problems. This work allows one to understand the value of simplicity by seeing the connection of simplicity, not with truth, but
with predictive accuracy. An interesting philosophical consequence of this work is that it reopens the debate between instrumentalism and scientific realism.
Jed Buchwald, MIT, History of Science
Jed Buchwald is Bern Dibner Professor of History of Science at MIT and director of the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology. In 1995 he was chosen as a MacArthur Fellow. His is the author of numerous books and articles on 19th century physics. His work focuses on the tacit knowledge--the shared but often implicit assumptions, values, and understandings--that shapes the practice of science.
John Dupre, University of London, Department of Philosophy
John Dupre is the author of The Disorder of Things (Harvard University Press, 1993). John Dupré's work has been most centrally focused on the philosophy of biology, addressing such issues as taxonomy, essentialism and reductionism.
Michael Root, University of Minnesota, Department of Philosophy
Michael Root's recent Philosophy of the Social Sciences (1996) is centered around the prospects for value free social science.
Abstract
Reconstructing People
As a rule, the categories that sociologists use in classifying their subjects, categories like race, marital status, occupation and gender, are categories that their subjects use in classifying themselves. A central issue in sociology is whether, in studying deviance, a sociologist should use her subjects' categories or her own. In particular, should she use 'deviant' to label whatever her subjects disapprove of or should she allow her own moral judgments (what ought they to disapprove of) to guide her use of the term? The question, in broader tersm, is whether the social sciences ought to be value netural or partisan. My aim in this paper is to consider the arguments for and against the use of the subjects' labels in the study of deviance and to argue that, when it comes to classification, value neutrality is not an appropriate idea for the social sciences.
Helen Longino, University of Minnesota
Helen Longino is the author of Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990)
Abstract
This talk will articulate and complicate conventional North American critical approaches to the issue of values in science, by introducing questions and problems from the perspective of scholars and activists in the developing world.
Anne Fausto-Sterling, Brown University, Department of Medical Science
She is the author of scientific publications in the field of Drosophila (fruit fly) developmental genetics. Her current laboratory research focuses on the evolution of regenerative ability and of sexual and asexual systems of reproduction in the group of flatworms known as Planaria. She has also done research in the social studies of science which is reflected in her book Myths of Gender: Biological Theories about Women and
Men (Basic Books, 1992). She is currently at work on two book-length projects. The first deals with Biology and the Social Construction of Sexuality and is forthcoming in 2/2000 as Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Human Sexuality. (Basic Books); the second examines the intersections of race and gender in the founding moments of modern biology.
Alison Wylie, Washington University, and Lynn Hankinson-Nelson, University of Missouri
Alison Wylie has been a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study at Stanford and is the author of numerous articles on issues in philosophy of science and the social sciences, especially archeology (homepage). Lynn Hankinson-Nelson is the author of Who Knows: From Quine to a Feminist Empiricism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990) and the editor of a special issue of Synthese on Feminism and Science.
Paper: Coming to Terms with the Value(s) of Science: Insights from Feminist Science Scholarship
Ronald Sundstrom, University of Memphis, Department of Philosophy
Ronald Sunstrom received his Ph.D in Philosophy from the University of Minnesota in 1999, writing a dissertation on race.
Abstract
My paper will explore what values come to play in how sociologists measure, describe, and explain racial segregation/separation in residential housing. I will show that values are assumed and asserted when researchers take either the "separation (voluntary, noinstitutional racism)" or "segregation (involuntary, institutional racism) model." I will then explore the question of which values should be assumed, and the social and political implications for each.
Sherrilynn Roush, Rice University, Department of Philosophy
Sherrilynn Roush received her Ph. D. in Philosophy from Harvard University in 1999 with a dissertation on anthropic principles in science
Abstract
Thomas Kuhn argued that it was more accurate to think of scientific choice (including theory choice) as guided by values than as determined by methodological rules. I discuss what difference it makes to opt for one alternative or the other, and argue that it doesn't have much to do with whether science is value-laden since science is employs values even if it is governed by methodological rules. Thus, science does not turn out to be value-free, even on the picture of scientific reasoning the logical empiricists aspired to defend.
Jessica Riskin, MIT, History of Science
Jessica Riskin received her Ph.D. in History from Berkeley in 1995 and is now Leo Marx Career Development Assistant Professor of the History and Culture of Science and Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her book Science in the Age of Sensibility: Knowledge and Sentiment in Eighteenth Century France is currently under review.
Christian Perring, Dowling College, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
Christian Perring received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Princeton University in 1996. He has published several recent articles on philosophy of science issues and psychopathology.
Abstract
My talk will be on the values inherent in psychiatic theory and practice. I will explain the futility of trying to make psychiatry value-free, and discuss how we should clarify and decide on what values should be at the heart of
psychiatry.
John Roberts, University of North Carolina, Department of Philosophy
John Roberts received his Ph.D from the University of Pittsburgh in 1999 with a dissertation on laws of nature and has a forthcoming article in Synthese with John Earman on "other things being equal' qualifications of scientific laws and experimental results.
Abstract
It is widely conceded that there is at least one sense in which science isnot value free: the practice of science involves commitments to the value of such things as truth, objectivity, and epistemic justification. What
is more controversial is whether science involves any values that are notepistemic values (as the aforementioned values seem to be). It has been argued (by Harding, for example) that on most traditional views of
science, its practice involves commitment to certain democratic values, such as the equality of all observers. It can be argued that, even if science involves does involve such democratic values, these values function in science as fundamentally epistemic values; this is because science pursues those values not for their own sake, but rather
instrumentally, for the sake of promoting epistemic values such as objectivity. I will explore a way in which it might be argued that, on the contrary, certain democratic values inherent in the practice of science are, or ought to be, valued by scientists (qua scientists) not merely as means to the end of promoting epistemic values. but for their
own sake as well, even in some cases where they would seem to conflict with some epistemic values.
Adam Kovach, Rice University, Department of Philosophy
Adam Kovach received his Ph.D in Philosophy and Cognitive Science from Indiana University in 1998. His dissertation concerned theories of truth and defended the idea that truth is a value concept.
Abstract
Truth as a Goal of Inquiry
One of the fundamental features of the concept of truth is its use in the evaluation or assessment (in a normative sense) of claims and theories. Recently, Crispin Wright has argued that the fact that we attach normativeignificance to truth as as an ideal of rational, especially scientific, inquiry is a reason to believe that truth is a genuine objective standard. Richard Rorty and Huw Price are among those who have argued that the normative significance of truth is no grounds for drawing Wright's conclusion, for it is merely the result of widespread belief in a "mythical goal" of inquiry. In this paper, I clarify and develop the Wright-style argument, and show that if properly developed, the argument has more promise than the critics have recognized.
Brad Wray, University of British Columbia, Department of Philosophy
Scientitic Institutions and the Aim of Value Free Inquiry
Scientists want to ensure that their preconceptions and interests do not adversely affect inquiry. In particular, they want to ensure that their evaluations of competing hypotheses is based solely on the epistemic merits of the hypotheses. Scientific inquiry is regarded as value free to the extent that this goal is realized. The institutions and practices constitutive of science are designed to ensure that scientists are able to effectively realize these goals (Wray forthcoming). For example, the blind refereeing of articles ensures that scientists' biases are detected and
corrected for (Longino 1990). But, like any other social institution or practice, the institutions and practices constitutive of science can become dysfunctional, and thus undermine the effective pursuit of the very goal they were designed to aid scientists in realizing (Merton 1973). For example, the desire for recognition, initially fostered in an effort to encourage scientists to make their findings public, sometimes leads scientists to publish prematurely, which becomes an impediment to the effective realization of their goals (Hull 1988). In this paper, I will examine the ways in which the institutions and practices constitutive of science both aid and impede scientists in the effective realization of their epistemic goals. My analysis will focus on the institutions and practices
surrounding the publication of scientific articles.
Robin Hendry, University of Durham, Department of Philosophy
Robin Hendry received his Ph.D in Philosophy from the London School of Economics. Recent work (1997) includes research on models and approximations in quantum chemistry.
Ned Hall, MIT, Department of Philosophy
Ned Hall received his Ph.D from Princeton in 1996. He works mainly on metaphysics and philosophy of science, with a special emphasis on philosophical problems associated with the foundations of quantum physics.
Esther-Mirjam Sent, University of Notre Dame, Department of Economics
Esther-Mirjam Sent received her Ph.D in economics from Standford University in 1994, writing a dissertation rational expectations macroeconomics. Her The Evolving Rationality of Rational Expectations: An Assessment of Thomas Sargent's Achievements (1998) extends that work and applies a roughly social constructivist viewpoint. She is now Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of Notre Dame and Faculty Fellow, Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values, University of Notre Dame.
Interactions between the ideology of scientific neutrality and the economics of science
Abstract: This paper discusses the ideology of scientific neutrality within the context of changing regimes in science. It suggests an analytical classification of structures of science organization in the 20th century that is inextricably connected to geographic, historical, and cultural contexts. What this implies is that, while the content of science aims to transcend all geographical and temporal bounds, the prosecution of scientific research cannot aspire
to any such transcendence. In brief, based upon a cross-section of recent work in the history of science and science policy, the paper proposes that there have existed three very distinct regimes of science organization in the United States in the 20th century, and that each regime has borne a special relationship to the contemporary
organization of science in other countries. While they may overlap in certain particulars, it will place the temporal divisions of these regimes at the following boundaries: early 20th century-1940; World War II and the Cold War; and (roughly) 1980-present. For convenience, the paper will call them the (1) proto-industrial regime, (2) the
Cold War regime, and (3) the globalized privatization regime. The object in describing these regimes is not to provide a full-fledged history of science organization in the United States,but rather to set the stage for a larger argument, namely, that each regime comprised a distinct set of structures that have in practice required quite differing versions of an "economics of science" to account for their regularities and very distinct approaches to the ideology of scientific neutrality.