Scientists, Democracy and Society: A Community of Inquirers (Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning, 16) 3319749374, 9783319749372

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Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning 16

Pierluigi Barrotta

Scientists, Democracy and Society A Community of Inquirers

Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning Interdisciplinary Perspectives from the Humanities and Social Sciences Volume 16

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Pierluigi Barrotta

Scientists, Democracy and Society A Community of Inquirers

Pierluigi Barrotta Department of Civilizations and Forms of Knowledge University of Pisa Pisa, Italy

ISSN 2214-9120 ISSN 2214-9139 (electronic) Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning ISBN 978-3-319-74937-2 ISBN 978-3-319-74938-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74938-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018933471 © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018, corrected publication 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

This book is an updated and slightly expanded version of my Science and Democracy, which came out in Italian at the end of 2016. Though I had not planned it, the time could not have been more appropriate. A few months after its publication, in Italy, in the wake of what periodically happens throughout Europe and around the world, a fierce protest began because of the alleged danger of vaccines, especially those given to children. During the ensuing controversy, a physician, a virologist to be exact, was provoked into an angry outburst, and on his blog he published a post entitled ‘Science is not democratic’, which was followed by dozens of articles and comments published in newspapers and websites. Reading the post, the reasons the virologist puts forward in support of this statement are clear: unlike what happens in democracy, science is not based on opinions. Scientific decisions are not taken ‘by a show of hands’ but are the result of rigorous observations and experiments. To follow the example of the virologist, even if 99% of the world’s population believed that two plus two make five, two plus two will always make four, regardless of the majority or minority opinion that is able to galvanise public opinion as a whole. To many readers, this observation will appear rather superficial and naive. I do not deny that it is, although we must avoid adding our anger to the virologist’s anger. It is not simply the fact that the physician, with extremely good and more than legitimate reasons, was alarmed and worried about the health of hundreds of children. The point I would like to make here is another: sometimes naive remarks can catch us off-guard and invite by no means trivial reflections in understanding why they are naive. Even the many who reject the virologist’s affirmation on the relationship between science and democracy should admit that among them there is certainly no shared opinion as to why his claim must be firmly rejected. This is especially true going from the debates reported in magazines and newspapers to debates that take place in the academic world and in journals that study the complex relationships between science and society.

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In this work, I will support a thesis that initially is likely to appear counterintuitive. I will argue that in a liberal democracy, scientists and laypeople should be considered as members of a single community of inquirers, whose objective is the truth. The perplexities that this thesis immediately raises are evident. To assert that scientists and laypeople make up a single community of inquiry promptly raises the objection that there is a disparity of competence between scientific experts and public opinion that is difficult to overcome. How can we even just imagine a community of inquiry composed of people whose dialogue is, to put it mildly, challenging and taxing? I believe that the second part of my thesis also raises legitimate perplexities. How can we say that democratic and liberal societies have the objective of truth, which as such should be accepted by all the citizens? At first sight, it would indeed appear to be a thesis that is not easily compatible with the irrepressible existence of a plurality of values and interests which are potentially in conflict with each other, since they are not always reconcilable in specific and concrete circumstances. Moreover, at a more philosophical level, it might be argued that we should not confound the recognition of the truth of a belief with the acceptance of moral and social values, since they pose completely different problems. It is through the answer to these questions that I will try to set out three assumptions that are accepted, not too critically, both by those who in the book I defined as the ‘enthusiasts’ and those I have called the ‘apocalyptic party’. First, I will argue in favour of rejecting the belief that if science were not morally neutral, then it could not be objective either. On the contrary, I will argue that science is both objective and laden with moral and social values. The defence of this thesis will take up a great part of the book. Once accepted, the rejection of the other two very commonly held assumptions is not surprising. For one thing, it is wrong to think of science and society as two conceptually separate blocs that oppose each other. In fact, science and society are both fragmented and subject to variable alliances. By the same token, it is wrong to think that between science and society there is a unidirectional flow of information, which goes from science to society or from society to science. Science and society mutually define themselves, also through processes that, following Dewey’s philosophy in his later period, I have defined as transactional. Once these assumptions have been rejected, we will see why it is not at all counterintuitive to state that scientists and laypeople constitute a single community of inquirers, whose objective is the truth. The book has had a rather long gestation period. As often happens, the partial results of research have already been published in the form of essays. In some cases, I have basically incorporated them, albeit with various and necessary modifications; in others, they are much improved and more detailed; in others still, they have served as a useful background to address the issues dealt with in the book; then, after the publication of the Italian version, other essays have since appeared that relate to specific topics of the book. The publication of each of these essays has helped me to focus on the problems I have dealt with here. These are the essays (the relative sections of the book are specified in brackets; the full references are found in the bibliography): Hume’s Law and the Ideal of Value-Free Science (Chap. 1, Sect. 1.2 and 1.3); Facts and Values in Ecology: Philosophical Insights from Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (Chap. 1, Sect. 1.4); Why Economists Should Be Unhappy with the

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Economics of Happiness (Chap. 2, Sect. 2.4); La neutralità morale della scienza. Paradossi e pericoli di un mito duro a morire (Chap. 3, Sect. 3.1); James Lovelock, Gaia Theory, and the Rejection of Fact/Value Dualism (Chap. 2, Sect. 2.4, and Chap. 3, Sect. 3.2); Fatti e valori nella valutazione del rischio tecnologico (Chap. 3, Sects. 3.4 and 3.5); The Dam Project: Who Are the Experts? A Philosophical Lesson from the Vajont Disaster, with E. Montuschi (Chap. 3, Sect. 3.5); and Economia e valori ambientali. Un approccio pragmatista (Chap. 5, Sect. 5.3). It just remains for me to add my thanks and a much needed dedication. My thanks go to Wendy Doherty, who patiently translated a book originally written in the language of Dante into the somewhat very different language of Shakespeare. Since I have also had occasion to work on translations, I know the difficulties that this entails. The dedication goes to my wife, Veronica. I owe my gratitude to her for being so patient in accepting the periods of ‘seclusion’ needed in order to write the book. Pisa, Italy December 2017

Pierluigi Barrotta

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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1

Hume’s ‘Law’ and the Ideal of Value-Free Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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2

Concepts, Values, and Scientific Measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Values and Inductive Risk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Scientific Research and Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Values, Transactional Relationships and the Autonomy of Science . . 107

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Science and Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

Erratum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

E1

Conclusion: More on the Four Conceptions Pertaining to the Relationship Between Science and Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

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For the vast majority of scientists, science and democratic societies should not conflict, since they accomplish different tasks. Science deals with the explanation and prediction of facts, i.e. the growth of knowledge; society is instead concerned with the use of the knowledge thus acquired, so as to achieve the aims and values that it has freely chosen through appropriate institutional mechanisms. Therefore, there is a well-defined boundary between science and society. Of course, everyone is prepared to acknowledge that drawing a boundary between science and society in these terms is an idealisation. We will not consider, but only for the moment, that we have left the real meaning of ‘science’ and ‘democracy’ undetermined. Here we could extricate ourselves in an intuitive manner: paradigmatic examples of science are given by hard sciences, such as physics, while by ‘democratic societies’ we understand our societies, which are founded on the law and individual rights. With this insight, we have left behind a problem of conceptual approximation. The implicit idealisation, I think accepted by everyone, is of a different kind: society does not only use the knowledge acquired by science, since it is also responsible for funding scientific research. After all, from a sociological viewpoint, science is a component of society from which it draws the resources necessary for its development. We must therefore admit that society inevitably influences the growth of knowledge, choosing what projects are worthy of pursuit, including those projects that are not immediately relevant to social welfare. Thus, the image of the ‘boundary’ must at least be qualified, although few scientists and philosophers of science would be prepared to drop it. In fact, they would emphasise that the boundary is conceptual, not strictly sociological. For them, there are at least three good reasons to defend the boundary. Two are normative and one is epistemological. Each of them has a long history. The first reason concerns the defence of the autonomy of science from society. After cases such as that of Lysenko in the Soviet Union or of Galileo during the Scientific Revolution, the importance of defending the autonomy of science from the interference of values that are alien to it should be clear to everyone – values such as political, religious or ideological values. xi

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The second reason concerns the defence of the autonomy of society from science. In fact, we must avoid falling into scientism and technocracy, where scientists and experts seek to deliberate on the values and purposes of society. Today, scientism and technocracy are no longer fashionable, even though we should avoid letting our guard down, since in many areas it is easy to pass inadvertently from the explanation of facts to the defence of values. The third reason is epistemological and sustains the first two: science is value-free and thus morally neutral. In fact, there is a huge difference between explaining or predicting facts, a task belonging to science, and choosing moral or social values, which belongs to individual and collective decision-making processes. The very same idea could be expressed in a more philosophical jargon: Truth, it is said, is the constitutive value of science, namely, the value that is proper to it, while moral or extra-cognitive values are alien to science and belong to the free debate that takes place in democratic societies. Today, as I have said, the vast majority of scientists and philosophers of science stand for the defence of the boundary between science and society. Yet, if we focus on other circles, views can even radically change. It is in these circles that we hear talk of the need to democratise science, which is denounced for its implicit authoritarianism. In the academic world, the most radical constructivists maintain that the alleged scientific truths are actually the outcome of ‘social negotiations’ or ‘power relations’. If we want to understand why a theory has been accepted by a scientific community, we must not look to scientists and empirical evidence, but to society as a whole. To use a term that has become so common as to be part of journalistic idiom, accepted scientific theories are ‘constructs’ which must be carefully ‘deconstructed’ in order to reveal the social relations that have led to their acceptance. The reaction of the scientific world in the face of these arguments, which appear as ambitious as philosophically questionable, is rather one of annoyance. This is demonstrated by the controversy arising from the now famous ‘Sokal’s hoax’. In short, in the second half of the 1990s, a physicist, Alan Sokal, submitted a paper on quantum gravity to the journal Social Text. In the paper, Sokal argued that quantum gravity was a social construct, though he merely aped the convoluted language of constructivists, without believing a word of what he himself had written. The paper was accepted, and Sokal subsequently announced that it was, in fact, a hoax. Philosophers of science came to the aid of scientists in the condemnation of radical constructivism. The book edited by Noretta Koertge (1998) represents perhaps the most blatant attempt to re-establish the boundary before the constructivist invasion. Antiscientific movements are common in public opinion as well. Like a karst river, we periodically hear that some scientific communities have been accused of pretending to deliver genuine knowledge, even though they are actually at the service of big corporations or the established power. Across Europe, we have witnessed accusations like this in the cases of genetically modified organisms and nuclear power stations. With respect to constructivism, the position of the scientific community has been more patient and polite. In the 1980s, alarmed by the widespread hostility towards new technologies, the Royal Society along with the

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American Association for the Advancement of Science launched the programme of public understanding of science. It was noted, with good reasons, that the public had a poor understanding of the procedures followed by science and its achievements. The programme had been intended to convince the public to be more respectful of the boundary line between science and democratic societies. Public opinion was just not able to understand science. Thus, on the ‘boundary’ between science and society, an important cultural and political battle has been taking place. Efforts to involve the public are also apparent in the interest in the issue shown by newspapers, magazines and nonacademic reviews. The commitment on this issue on the part of the major media comes as no surprise, given the importance of science in the contemporary world and the deference surrounding the very concept of ‘democratic society’.

Four Conceptions of the Relationship Between Science and Society We can try to develop a typology of the troops fighting on the border today. We have those who I will call ‘moderate enthusiasts’ and ‘radical enthusiasts’, as regards the defenders of science against the intrusions of society, and the ‘moderate apocalyptic party’ and the ‘radical apocalyptic party’, to indicate those who believe that science should somehow be socially or democratically controlled. There is some irony in the names making up this typology, since I believe that all four parties make serious conceptual errors. In addition, the typology does not intend to be exhaustive (I have deliberately left technocracy out of the framework, because it seems to me a widely discredited conception today). These are only some views that currently appear rather common. The point I would like to emphasise the most is that all of these four conceptions, although they are very different, share some assumptions that are as important as they are questionable. Their upholders are incompatible bedfellows: They appear to argue harshly, though in fact they share many things. In order to get a clear idea of the relationship between science and society, it is these assumptions that must be rejected. Thus, the proposed typology is useful to better delineate the conception of the relationship between science and democratic societies which I wish to defend here. Let us begin with the enthusiasts’ position. Moderate enthusiasts: Pure science is morally neutral. It is only when scientific knowledge is applied for specific practical purposes that we are entitled to assert that research could possibly be morally condemned. Moderate enthusiasts seem to have good reasons on their side. It is not easy to understand in what sense research on black holes (just to choose a particularly esoteric topic of physics) might be related to practical problems in society. On the contrary, there are topics where moral consequences are clearly significant. It is not

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by chance that Robert Oppenheimer claimed that physics had known sin with the construction of the first atomic bomb. However, pure science, as the very name suggests, only aims at the growth of knowledge, which is itself a priceless asset that must be defended from interferences. Radical enthusiasts: Whole science, not only pure science, is morally neutral. Radical enthusiasts agree that pure science is morally neutral. However, they extend this statement to every kind of research, including technological and applied research. They point to the fact that technological artefacts are morally ambivalent. This is the case even for atomic bombs. In fact, atomic bombs could be used against civilians (in order to kill hundreds of thousands of people) or could be used as a deterrent to prevent a war (thereby saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of people). In more general terms, it could be argued that scientific research only has the purpose of formulating propositions on the characteristics (reliability and application scope) of a technological artefact, and these propositions are true or false regardless of moral considerations. Moral evaluations arise only when society (or its representatives) decides on the use of the technological artefact. The radical apocalyptic party: Scientific knowledge is a social construction. The alleged objectivity of scientific knowledge should be ‘deconstructed’ in order to show the social and economic negotiations on which it is based. The term ‘constructivism’ has become so popular as to cover a wide variety of positions, which would be appropriate to distinguish (cf. Hacking 1999). Yet, there is one basic point that makes us understand scientists’ reactions to constructivism, as highlighted by Sokal’s case. It is the idea that the content of scientific knowledge does not depend on nature and empirical investigations, but on social factors such as economic interests and power relations. We should not ridicule the radical apocalyptic party to the point of turning it into a straw man. Even the most radical constructivist does not deny that sometimes scientific theories do not work because they clash with a nature that is independent of people’s desires. What they claim is that the same empirical phenomena could be explained by an endless number of very different conceptual constructs and that these constructs are social in nature. The moderate apocalyptic party: In some way, scientific research must be controlled by means of moral values. Otherwise, science could become dangerous for social progress. This idea is relatively common among religious movements. Above all, in the context of life sciences, the same means with which scientists carry out their research are laden with values. Galileo’s inquiry on falling bodies does not give rise to problems because there can be no moral objections to the use of inclined planes as a means to carry out the investigation. On the contrary, the case of embryonic stem cells is clearly different. In cases like this, it is necessary for society to implement a moral control on the investigation.

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Three Implicit Presumptions These conceptions seem to be radically different, but in fact they have much in common. We can identify three implicit presumptions, which must all be rejected. In these introductory remarks, I will merely mention some reasons that lead to their rejection. Science and society are two separate blocs that oppose each other. This presumption is quite evident in the enthusiasts and the moderate apocalyptic party. The radical apocalyptic party implicitly adopts it when speaking of social factors that are opposed to epistemic and scientific factors. Against this presumption, we must acknowledge that science is not always unanimous in the assessment of research. One could perhaps claim that sometimes scientists are not unanimous simply because the empirical evidence is currently not sufficient. However, it is worth noting that insufficient evidence in itself would not prevent scientists from achieving unanimity. In the case of insufficient evidence, scientists could agree on the scale of uncertainty pending definitive empirical results or, at least, they could agree that there are no decisive elements to make a choice. This does not usually happen. On the contrary, we witness red-hot controversies where each party shows granitic and incompatible certainties. Even at a superficial glance, science proves to be rather fragmented; at least we can say that it is not a homogeneous bloc. However, this is not the essential point. Rather, it is only the premise. Scientific disputes are based on careful fact gatherings and rigorous criticisms of the arguments from the opposing party. Without these epistemic factors, we could not speak of scientific inquiries. However, this does not prevent scientific controversies from being closely connected with social conflicts, because each scientific party is supported by different sectors of society. This is the case of controversies about the use of nuclear energy, the safety of genetically modified organisms, the experimental use of embryonic stem cells or the controversy on the limits to economic growth. There are also remarkable reversals of alliances, as environmental movements show. In the 1960s, Rachel Carson strongly criticised the science of her day. For Carson, official science was unable to see the consequences of human actions on the food chain because of its narrow specialisations. Since then, environmental movements have always been wary of science. Today, with the controversy about anthropogenic global warming, we are witnessing an alliance between environmentalism and official science, which is represented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Science and society are not two opposing blocs because they show shifting alliances between components of science and components of society. It is also worth noticing that such a variability affects not only social groups but also individuals. In fact, it is far from rare to find individuals who at the same time

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uphold and deny the reasons of official science. I do not have statistics to propose, but we have all come across someone who believes in homoeopathic medicine and at the same time upholds the concern of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This is a remark the nature of which is mainly sociological. However, it acquires philosophical significance when we consider the other two presumptions. Influences are unidirectional: They go from science to society or from society to science. For radical and moderate enthusiasts, though with the difference that we have seen, science offers society the knowledge of the world surrounding us. Scientific knowledge is determined by nature, not by moral or social concerns. Instead, the task of society is to make the best use of this knowledge, in light of its purposes and moral values. The moderate apocalyptic party does not deny this belief. They just add a proviso, which underlines that the search for truth must be carried out within deontological constraints. Therefore, they do not deny that the information flow is unidirectional, proceeding from science to society. On the contrary, for the radical apocalyptic party, society shapes the very content of scientific knowledge. Yet in this case too, the flow is still unidirectional, although it takes place in the opposite direction: it is society that determines what we mean by scientific knowledge. Instead, the process is bidirectional: It not only goes from science to society but also from society to science. In one word, science and society mutually define themselves. In this book, we will find many arguments supporting this view, from the features of ‘inductive risk’ to the nature of ‘thick terms’ and the most general ‘transactional view’ of knowledge and reality (as we will see, the analysis of the so-called thick terms will prove to be a specific case of the transactional view of knowledge and reality). In these introductory remarks, a very simple example shows how the transactional view helps us understand the way science and society mutually define themselves (along with the transactional view, I will develop the example in Chap. 5). The example stresses how science and society collaborate in the creation of new ontologies in the very precise sense that they lead to the creation of objects that did not exist before the transaction. Though it is a very specific instance of the transactional view, it is worth mentioning it here due to its simple and intuitive character. In his last period, Dewey distinguished transactions from interactions. In the interactions, the relationship between entities does not change their nature. The paradigmatic case of interaction is given by classical mechanics, where two bodies interact through gravitational forces. Other cases are clearly transactional in that there is a change in the nature of entities through their mutual relationships. The concept of transactional view is very wide, and, as I said before, here I will focus on a simple instance: at least on some occasions the relationship between science and society is transactional in that it leads to the creation of new scientific objects. Examples of this kind are given by GMOs and modified embryonic stem cells.

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These objects enrich scientific ontology and are the result of moral and practical concerns that have arisen from society. In their turn, the studies conducted on these new objects allow important implications to go from science to society, starting with the legal structures in society. We will also see that the concept of ‘transaction’ does not just concern the laboratory activities. Environmental economics, which is not an experimental science, should be reconstructed following the transactional view indicated by Dewey. In all these cases, moral values contribute to the creation of the ontology inherent in scientific research, and thanks to these changes, scientific research is in turn able to make changes in society. At this point, the discerning reader will wonder what I mean exactly by moral value. How are moral values different from social and political values? As will be seen, I am not directly interested in the question. In this book, the relevant axiological distinction is between values that inevitably accompany the objective gathering of facts and those that on the contrary distort it, depriving science of objectivity. Within this axiological distinction, moral values include social and political values, in the broad sense with which philosophers once defined the ‘practical’ activity of human beings. It is appropriate to bear in mind this broad meaning of ‘moral value’, especially when I discuss general theses through examples and case studies drawn from science. The transactional view I would like to defend should not be confused with radical constructivism. Later on, we will see why we should consider the transactional view as a kind of realism. In any case, we can appreciate its conceptual distance from radical constructivism if we move to the third presumption. If science were not morally neutral, then it would not be objective. Social constructivists (our radical apocalyptic party) consider the antecedent of the conditional as true (science is laden with moral values), and therefore they consider the consequent as true (science pretends to explain a reality independent of the context, while its theories are only social constructions). On the contrary, enthusiasts believe that the consequent is false (science is objective), and therefore they consider the antecedent as false too (science, or at least good science, is devoid of moral values). Apparently, the two positions are radically different, but in fact they both believe that the presumption, represented by the whole conditional proposition, is true. This is, I believe, the most important presupposition, which gives precise meaning to the previous ones. We thus come to the point of having to mention for the first time the general philosophic view that I intend to defend here: pragmatism. In fact, for pragmatism, or at least for the kind of pragmatism that I wish to illustrate, science is at the same time laden with moral values and objective. To understand this claim, we have to acknowledge some key concepts related to the theory of truth upheld by pragmatism. For pragmatism, research basically aims to soothe the irritation of doubt, which paralyses action. Therefore, the immediate aim of research is not the truth, but the elimination of doubt. Nevertheless, in pragmatism truth plays a central role in

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research. In fact, all methods that seek to prevent the emergence of doubt by isolating or defending our current beliefs are bound to fail. The only hope to achieve a system of beliefs that in the end will not give rise to doubts is supplied by the scientific method, which consists in the careful gathering of facts and in listening to criticisms. In this way, truth comes to play an essential role. Only if we follow the scientific method, i.e. only if we are open to facts and criticisms, can we have the ‘cheerful hope’ – I am using Peirce’s words – that in the end we will achieve true beliefs, in the sense of not being open to further doubts, since they constitute habits of conduct that successfully guide our actions. The pragmatist view of the truth has given rise to heated debates, to which I will return. From my point of view, the great advantage of this conception of the truth is that we can extend it to moral investigations. In ethics, truth is placed at the end of a potentially infinite inquiry. Once again, in its pragmatic sense a moral belief is true because it cannot in principle give rise to doubts about the best action to take in the relevant circumstances. Peirce did not sustain this extension of the pragmatist theory of the truth to ethics, but scholars who have deeply studied Peirce have endorsed this line of investigation, and I shall refer to them later on. In any case, it is worth noting that the extension of the logic of inquiry to ethics is also defended by John Dewey when claiming that moral ideas are similar to scientific hypotheses. To sum up, for pragmatism science and morality are two aspects of the very same inquiry, which aims at the truth. In this case too, one could legitimately wonder in what sense I use terms that have acquired different meanings in philosophy, thereby proving their ambiguity. On several occasions, I have used the word objectivity, leaving its meaning unspecified. So, what is meant by objectivity in this book? The meaning of objectivity that I intend to defend will be clarified well ahead in the book – in Chap. 4 – and is related to the pragmatist theory of truth and the distinction between existence and reality upheld by Peirce. In concise terms, a belief is objective when it is true in that it cannot in principle give rise to doubts. This meaning of objectivity is different from that most widely accepted. In a more traditional sense, objectivity means the correct representation of what exists. From my point of view, its main drawback lies precisely in preventing its extension to ethics. In fact, if we connect objectivity with what exists, then it appears almost heroic to argue that moral judgments are objective, since in the world there are no values waiting to be discovered in the same way the facts of physical nature are discovered. Even though someone has tried to argue in favour of this thesis, it appears too difficult to defend. For pragmatism, humankind remains the carrier of values, and this means that it does not make much sense to talk about values independently of human beings. Nevertheless, there is no need to deny the objectivity of moral inquiry. Although values do not exist in the world independently of man, morality is objective in that it prompts research which in the long run gives us the cheerful hope to achieve true moral beliefs, because they will not in principle give rise to doubts. In a sense that goes back to Peirce, values are real, though they do not exist.

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The Idea of a Perfectionist Democracy It is important to note that for the pragmatist democracy does have a perfectionist, not procedural, nature. It is not based on procedures that allow people to come to collective decisions without violating the rights of the minority. Rather, it relies on citizens who cultivate the epistemic virtues of the scientific method. In this sense, for the pragmatist democracy is a sort of ‘social research’, where science and morality are different aspects of the very same inquiry. It is also a liberal democracy, in defence of an open society (though, as we will see, not in a Popperian sense). Perfectionist democracies are usually profoundly illiberal, because they require citizens to cultivate a particular vision of the moral good. Nonetheless, the pragmatist view of democracy is an exception. In fact, for pragmatism democracy requires citizens who cultivate specific epistemic virtues, which are inherent in the scientific mentality. These virtues are indispensable to decide our personal plans of life knowledgeably, in order to best pursue our ‘consummatory’ ends (in Dewey’s sense). No doubt, there are many issues in need of clarification. An objection that might be raised against the pragmatist view of democracy (which is as obvious as it is important for this work) is the following: Its perfectionism appears to be utopian. Today, science is a highly specialised undertaking and it seems utopic to think that laypeople can communicate with scientists, creating a community of inquiry together. The problem of asymmetries in expertise exists, but I will argue that it can be overcome. What must be done is to clarify the manner in which public opinion can interact with the experts. For now, I will remind the reader of the three presumptions from which we started. To each presumption, I have opposed a contrary thesis. We have seen that (a) science and society are not two blocs that oppose each other, since they are fragmented and subject to variable alliances; (b) influences between science and society are bidirectional also via transactional processes, through which science and society mutually define themselves; and (c) science is both objective and laden with moral values. After the latter thesis, I also introduced a fourth claim: (d) science and morality are two aspects of the very same inquiry, which aims at the truth. From the critique of the three presumptions and the defence of the fourth claim, I intend to defend the following thesis: In a democratic society, scientists and laypeople are components of the very same community of inquiry, which aims at the truth. This is the general thesis of the book, which shows why the boundary metaphor is misleading. Against enthusiasts, it should be noted that democratic societies do not address two conceptually separable problems, one cognitive and another moral or extra-cognitive. Against the apocalyptic parties, it should be noted that it is improper to speak about a democratisation of science, as if the boundary has to be violated in order to show either the lack of objectivity of scientific research, in the case of the radical apocalyptic party, or its dangerous indifference to moral values, in the case of the moderate apocalyptic party. Rather, science and other social institutions are components of a single community of inquiry, which aim at the truth.

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Which Pragmatism? The term ‘pragmatism’ includes very different philosophical positions. In the early years of the last century, Arthur O. Lovejoy published an essay, the title of which is significant, Thirteen Pragmatisms, where it is stated that ‘each pragmatism of the thirteen should manifestly be given a name of its own, if confusion in future discussions is to be avoided’ (Lovejoy 1908: 38). Today, the situation has become even more complicated due to neopragmatism, which includes very different authors such as Hilary Putnam and Richard Rorty. This is not necessarily a symptom of crisis, even though defining oneself as a pragmatist requires some caution. The plurality of interests and approaches is in fact inherent in pragmatism. In a famous passage, William James (1907: 32) describes pragmatism in this way: As the young Italian pragmatist Papini has well said, [pragmatism] lies in the midst of our theories, like a corridor in a hotel. Innumerable chambers open out of it. In one you may find a man writing an atheistic volume; in the next someone on his knees praying for faith and strength; in a third a chemist investigating a body’s properties. In a fourth a system of idealistic metaphysics is being excogitated; in a fifth the impossibility of metaphysics is being shown. But they all own the corridor, and all must pass through it if they want a practical way of getting into or out of their respective rooms.

With a little effort, one could find a common feeling among pragmatists (the ‘corridor’ in Papini and James’s image), but I do not believe that it would be sufficiently significant, at least for the purposes I have in my mind. In this work, there will not be many references to neopragmatism. In particular, no specific use will be made of the philosophy of Rorty, who interpreted classic pragmatism, and especially the philosophy of Dewey, in the light of his own philosophical ideas (Hildebrand 2003, Chap. 4). Discussions on Putnam are partly different, since Putnam was certainly more respectful towards the ‘founding fathers’ of pragmatism. In particular, it is difficult not to recognise Putnam for having forcefully raised the legitimacy of the fact/value dichotomy. However, my constant reference is given by classic pragmatism and in particular the pragmatism of Peirce and Dewey. I found the support I had been looking for to defend a specific vision of the relationships between science, values and democracy in these authors. For the specialists in classical pragmatism, the reference to Peirce and Dewey still remains too wide. These authors are very different, even in their style. While Dewey deliberately adopted nontechnical terminology (which, contrary to his hope, did not make his works any clearer), Peirce is almost maniacal in introducing a specialised terminology (starting with the term ‘pragmaticism’, which he introduced to distance himself from the pragmatism of James and Schiller). Basically, from Peirce I will in particular take his theory of the truth, while from Dewey I will take the idea that the logic of scientific inquiry can be extended to morality. Or, in negative terms, I will reject Dewey’s view of the truth as ‘warranted assertibility’, while I will reject Peirce’s view that morality is a matter of instinct and sentiments. From both, I will

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take the view of inquiry as a method for the resolution of doubts. I do not believe that this is an outcome of a questionable syncretism, but of course, it is up to the reader to assess this claim.

The Structure of the Book The reasons leading to the rejection of the third presumption will require some groundwork. As previously mentioned, I maintain that this presumption is fundamental also to better understand the reasons leading to the rejection of the first two presumptions and, consequently, to understand the general thesis of the book: the idea of a single community of inquiry that includes scientists and laypeople. The first chapter is preliminary. It is dedicated to the so-called Hume’s ‘law’, which has always been a strong argument in favour of value-free science. This ‘law’ states that in any argument value judgements cannot be derived from purely factual premises. Anyone attempting to derive value judgements from purely factual premises makes a serious mistake: the ‘naturalistic fallacy’. Since science wants to explain or predict the way things are, the way things should be falls outside its jurisdiction. Between the world of facts and the world of values, there is an insurmountable gap of logic. While I will not question Hume’s ‘law’ from a strictly logical viewpoint, we will see why its use in the defence of the moral neutrality of science is not at all convincing and is even a hindrance to the growth of knowledge. The analysis of Hume’s ‘law’ reveals some asymmetry in the book. The reader will find several criticisms of constructivism, but the main polemical target is given by the philosophy of empiricism. Several years ago, I dedicated almost a whole book to the criticism of the radical constructivist trends of sociology and philosophy of science, and I do not have much more to add (cf. Barrotta 1998). There is, however, another and more important reason underlying this choice. To many, empiricism appears inherent in scientific research. Science could not proceed without rigorous observations. Without the help of controlled experience, science would in fact have none of the properties that we attach to it. Yet, although empiricism captures an obviously key aspect of science, it does not epitomise the way science proceeds. Rather, it is an ideology of science (and I would add an inadequate ideology of science). Even though today many philosophers and scientists firmly reject empiricism, many of its conceptual consequences remain firm. One of these is precisely that to be objective science must carefully avoid engaging in value judgements. The criticism of empiricism must be more radical. The correct alternative is given by pragmatism. While the first chapter merely criticises an inappropriate use of Hume’s ‘law’, the second and the third chapters directly address the role of values in scientific research. The second chapter shows the way moral values penetrate into the language of science, without reducing its objectivity. On the contrary, we will see why the ideal

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of value-free science would lead us to sacrifice significant parts of scientific research, the objectivity and practical importance of which no one doubts. The reason for this claim lies in the fact that moral values are sometimes essential to fix the empirical meaning of the terms used in science. It is in this context that I will connect Peirce’s pragmatic maxim with the so-called thick terms, i.e. terms that are both descriptive and evaluative, without the two components being conceptually separable. I will illustrate this idea through some case studies, such as the concept of biodiversity. The third chapter deals with the presence of moral values in science from another perspective. While the previous chapter shows how the empirical meaning of some scientific terms is dependent on moral values, the third chapter shows the moral consequences of the acceptance or rejection of a theory. I will show these consequences, thanks to a well-known argument, inherent in the ‘inductive risk’, which was proposed by Rudner and Churchman between the 1940s and 1950s of the last century. Recently, this topic has resurfaced and has been heatedly debated. We will see why the argument is essentially correct, despite the most recent criticisms that have been raised against it. Thanks to the concept of ‘climate sensitivity’, we will also appreciate an interesting overlap between the previous chapter and this one. Finally, through a dramatic case study (the tragedy of the Vajont Dam in the 1960s in Italy), I will show why the very same conceptual apparatus levelled against empiricists can be levelled against radical constructivists. As I have already mentioned, I will address the theme of truth and objectivity in the fourth chapter. In the previous chapters, it has been shown why scientific research is laden with moral values, without thereby being devoid of objectivity. Here I will show from a different perspective why science is objective even though it is laden with values. It is so because moral judgements are ‘true’ or ‘false’, like statements concerning facts. Science and morality share the same purpose. In the received view, moral values play a role only when scientific knowledge, which is in itself value-free, is applied in order to achieve practical purposes. However, I will argue that the distinction between ‘pure science’, devoid of moral values, and ‘applied science’, laden with values, is poorly formulated. Once we understand why, it will then be easy to reject the second assumption, which asserts the unidirectional influence between science and society. The fifth chapter strengthens the conclusions reached by the fourth. I will argue that moral judgements are similar to empirical hypotheses in that they are factually testable. Science and morality are therefore different aspects of the very same inquiry, since they use the same empirical procedure and have the same purpose: the truth. There are certainly differences that should not be overlooked, but distinctions must not be misunderstood to the point of becoming a dualism, concealing the many things that science and morality share. The transactional conception of knowledge will provide further evidence in support of this claim. The idea that science and morality are aspects of a single piece of research could give rise to concern, which however would show a poor understanding of what has been said in the previous chapters. One could wonder if the autonomy of scientific research is not jeopardised by the interference of moral values – including political

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and social values – coming from society. The latter, it is said, should refrain from distorting the proper research by imposing moral values that are, as such, ‘extracognitive’ by nature. We have already seen that it would be wrong to assume that moral judgements do not have cognitive import. Here, we will also see why the category of ‘extracognitive’ is too vaguely stated, since it includes very different attitudes towards scientific research. It is in this context that we will see the need for a more elaborate axiology. We must distinguish between values that distort the proper research and those that are inevitably associated with it. We will see why the correct introduction of moral evaluations in science does not in any way undermine the autonomy of science. On the contrary, instead of defending its autonomy, it is the thesis of valuefree science that encourages hazardous intrusion from society. The sixth chapter details the kind of perfectionism characterising the pragmatist view of democracy. Scientific experts and laypeople can and must cooperate, because they are both interested in the truth and should possess the correct scientific mentality. Given that today science is a highly specialised enterprise, this claim will probably appear utopian. Through the modern philosophy of expertise and the concept of public opinion, I will argue that, contrary to appearance, pragmatist perfectionism is not at all utopian. Scientist and laypeople’s membership in a single community of inquiry does not lead to thoughts of democratic societies, in their perfectionist sense, as forming a homogeneous bloc where consent reigns. On the contrary, in light of the rejection of the second and third presumption, we will see the reasons for rejecting the first presumption as well: science and society are inevitably fragmented and subject to variable and contingent alliances. This claim is not dangerous for scientific research and, in fact, is healthy for the proper functioning of democracy and science itself. From the rejection of all three presumptions, I come to defend the idea of a republic of science extended to all citizens or, to repeat myself, the idea that scientists and laypeople form a single community of inquirers, who aim at the truth. The comparison with Polanyi’s “The Republic of Science” and Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies will help understand the features of perfectionist democracy I intend to defend. The sixth chapter concludes the book. In the book, readers will not find legal and institutional issues, which form a large part of the body of work known under the name of Science and Technology Studies. It is not an inexcusable limitation of the book. In fact, this is research in the field of philosophy of science, where conceptual analysis is prominent with respect to sociological investigations, including the sociology of the law. Coherently with pragmatism, I believe that there are straightforward institutional consequences, but it is not the task of this work to elaborate on them. Rather, I believe that good philosophical analyses should precede sociological studies, without thereby diminishing their importance. In this respect, I can lean on Dewey’s authority, who, at the conclusion of his book on the role of public opinion in democratic societies, writes: ‘We are [. . .] concerned with [. . .] analysis. It is enough for present purposes if the problem has been clarified’ (Dewey 1927: 351).

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References Barrotta, P. (1998). La dialettica scientifica. Per un nuovo razionalismo critico. Turin: UTETlibreria. Dewey, J. (1927). The Public and its problems. In Dewey (1969–91). The collected works (J. A. Boydstone Ed.). Southern Illinois University Press. The later works (Vol. 2, pp. 235–372). Hacking, I. (1999). The social construction of what? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hildebrand, D. L. (2003). Beyond realism and anti-realism. John Dewey and the Neopragmatism. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. James, W. (1907). Pragmatism. A new name for some old ways of thinking. Popular lectures on philosophy. In Pragmatism and the meaning of truth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1978. Koertge, N. (Ed.). (1998), A house built on sand. Exposing postmodernist myths about science. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lovejoy, A. O. (1908). Thirteen pragmatisms. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Method, V(2), 29–38.

The original version of this frontmatter was revised. An erratum to this book can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74938-9_7

Chapter 1

Hume’s ‘Law’ and the Ideal of Value-Free Science

Abstract This is a preliminary chapter, though it is necessary to understand the apparent plausibility of the ideal of value-free science. Hume’s ‘law’ tells us that value judgments cannot be derived from purely descriptive premises. Since science wants to explain or predict the way things are in the world, the way these should be falls outside its jurisdiction. Between the world of facts and the world of values, there is an insurmountable gap of logic. I will not criticize the ‘law’ from a logical point of view. Rather, I will criticize its use in defence of the ideal of value-free science. I will also show why any use of the ‘law’ in defence of the ideal would block research. Keywords Balance of nature · Bridge principle · Enthymematic stratagem · Isought problem (fact/value dichotomy, Great Division, derivation of evaluative statements from purely factual premises) · Naturalistic fallacy · Sociobiology · Syllogistics · Value-free science

1.1

Hume’s Guillotine

A clear-cut distinction between science and morality is often upheld in defence of both scientific research and our moral convictions. Confounding the two domains would lead us to surrender to poor science and an equally poor morality. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Henri Poincaré forcefully expressed this view. In the introduction of The Value of Science, he clarified the reasons why science and morality necessarily belong to two different domains that can ‘touch’, but never come into conflict: If we ought not to fear moral truth, still less should we dread scientific truth. In the first place, it cannot conflict with ethics. Ethics and science have their own domains, which touch but do not interpenetrate. The one shows us to what goal we should aspire, the other, given the goal, teaches us how to attain it. So they can never conflict since they can never meet. There can no more be immoral science than there can be scientific morals (1908, Eng. trans. 2001: 190)

If Poincaré is right, science, or at least good science, is inevitably neutral from the point of view of morality. In the same way, any claim of an alleged scientific morality is unjustified. Any confusion of their respective roles can only lead to significant misunderstandings. © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 P. Barrotta, Scientists, Democracy and Society, Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning 16, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74938-9_1

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1 Hume’s ‘Law’ and the Ideal of Value-Free Science

Many subsequent historical events seem to give support to Poincaré’s concerns. In the twentieth century, with the totalitarian turn of the Nazi regime, people came to speak of ‘Aryan’ physics, thereby bringing to completion the intolerance toward the autonomy of science, which was perhaps already deeply rooted in German society. In one of the few historical studies on the birth and spread of the ideal of value-free science, Proctor (1991: 105 ff.) suggests that the success of Max Weber’s valueneutrality thesis is also explainable as an attempt on the part of social scientists to defend themselves from interferences of a basically authoritarian State. Neither were these dangers limited to Germany. In the Soviet Union, Stalin and his regime conducted a relentless war against the nascent science of genetics. The Lysenko case worried generations of scientists, warning of what could happen when, by confounding radically heterogeneous domains, people pursue the idea of a moral science or a scientific morality. Michael Polanyi, who in addition to being a valued chemical physicist proved to be a refined philosopher of science, became a member of the Society for Freedom in Science in the wake of the indignation brought about by the Lysenko case (cf. Polanyi 1951, Chapters 2 and 4). These concerns are certainly justified. Once again, as Poincaré showed us, confounding science and morality means doing poor science and defending an equally dubious idea of morality. Poincaré wrote at the beginning of the last century, but his view still holds contemporary consensus among scientists. Faced with such a widespread sentiment, the following words by Dewey (1925: 304) appear surprising even today: “The primary function of philosophy at present is to make clear that there is no such difference as this division assumes between science [and] morals.” This sentence is taken from Experience and Nature, written in the middle of the 1920s. Years later, the concept was reiterated in The Quest for certainty: “The problem of restoring integration and cooperation between man’s beliefs about the world in which he lives and his beliefs about the values and purposes that should direct his conduct is the deepest problem of modern life” (1929: 204).1 At that time, these claims were strongly resisted, and today the situation has not changed much. As Morton G. White (1949) remarked, Dewey seems to be trying to achieve the impossible goal of deducing what ought to be, which characterizes morality, from the study of what is, which characterizes scientific research. As we will see (see Sect. 5.1), criticisms like White’s do not do justice to Dewey’s theory of values. Nonetheless, we have touched on a crucial point here. In fact, the ideal of the moral neutrality of science seems to find strong support from the so-called ‘Great Division’ between facts and values: it is one thing to say that things are in a certain way, another to suggest how they should be in the light of some values.

And again a few lines later: “[The] central problem [of philosophy] is the relation that exists between the beliefs about the nature of things due to natural science and beliefs about values” (Dewey 1929: 204). 1

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Through its long history, the Great Division has taken on different meanings, the nature of which is both semantic and logical. In this chapter, I will deal with its logical nature, while its semantic dimension will be treated in the following chapter. In fact – as a staunch defender of the Great Division, Karl Popper (1948: 154), emphasized – its simplest and unquestionable meaning seems to be of logical nature; and in principle it is always wise to start with the simplest topic. As stated in any philosophy textbook, in its logical function the Great Division takes this form: we cannot derive evaluative statements from purely factual premises. Between the two domains, that of facts, whose study is the task of science, and that of values, which is within the field of ethics, there would be necessarily be a logical leap. To hold otherwise would be to fall into an error as banal as it is serious: the naturalistic fallacy, indicating the groundless attempt to derive values from factual bases. The concept of ‘naturalistic fallacy’ has its own precise history. Shortly, I will say something about it. However, for now we can notice that when scientists and philosophers of science speak of ‘naturalistic fallacy’ they have in mind David Hume, to whom the thesis of the logical non-deductibility of values from facts is attributed. This is the famous passage wherein Hume supposedly argued the non-deductibility thesis: In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark’d, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, ‘tis necessary that it shou’d be observ’d and explain’d; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. (Hume 1964, book III, part I, sect. I, vol. 2: 245–6)

Such a logical impossibility has been elevated to the dignity of a ‘law’, the so-called Hume’s ‘law’ in honour of the philosopher who, it seems, first established it. Its prestige among scientists and philosophers of science is such that sometimes the ‘law’ is presented as if it had the same status as Gödel’s impossibility theorem, in this way transferring all its prestige to the ideal of value-free science. One of the few philosophers of science who vehemently attacked the ‘law’ was the late Putnam (2002). Putnam is right when he underlined that for Hume his ‘law’ was strictly related to semantic issues, and consequently cannot be reduced to a simple logical matter. Yet, in this chapter we will see that we could – and should – reject the use of Hume’s ‘law’ in defence of value-free science without questioning the semantics underlying Hume’s philosophy (I will tackle semantic problems in Chap. 2). This critique is simpler and more straightforward and therefore in a sense stronger if the purpose is to show the irrelevance (and, we will see, even the danger) of the ‘law’ when we move from logic to philosophy of science.

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One could wonder why today scientists give so much importance to Hume’s ‘law’ and the related naturalistic fallacy. Currently, few are afraid of the intrusiveness of totalitarian regimes on scientific research. Getting their fingers burnt on the economic disasters generated by the attempt to bend science to values supported by political power, as in the Lysenko case, even authoritarian regimes allow scientists some autonomy in research. Nevertheless, the injunction not to confuse facts with the values has, if possible, gained even more importance: from the defence of the autonomy of science from political power, Hume’s ‘law’ (even though it is not always explicitly mentioned) has become the conceptual tool which requires the scientist to have a minimum of intellectual integrity. It is certainly possible, from a psychological viewpoint, that scientists come to support moral evaluations through their investigations, but these assessments do not in any way derive from the scientific content of research. This is only an illegitimate juxtaposition that should, for intellectual honesty, be distinct from scientific investigations. In an often-quoted passage, the economist Lionel Robbins very vividly defends the ideal of morally neutral science. The following sentence echoes almost to the letter the theory expressed by Poincaré: It does not seem logically possible to associate the two studies [i.e. economics and ethics] in any form but mere juxtaposition. Economics deals with ascertainable facts; ethics with valuation and obligations. The two fields of inquiry are not on the same plane of discourse. Between the generalizations of positive and normative studies there is a logical gulf. [. . .] Propositions involving the verb ‘OUGHT’ are different in kind from propositions involving the verb ‘IS’. (Robbins 1932: 148–9)

Not surprisingly, phrases such as this belong to the cultural milieu of many social scientists. Natural scientists tend to take the fact/value divide for granted, while in the social sciences the ideal of value-free science is not unanimously accepted. Nonetheless, in the history of science it is fairly common to find analogous lines of argument outside traditional social sciences. In the ‘70s, Edward O. Wilson (1975) proposed to extend his studies in ethology and population genetics to human society. Such an extension only concerned the last chapter of his book – Sociobiology. The New Synthesis – which comprised 27 chapters, yet the accusation of unduly mixing facts and values discredited his entire work.2 This charge does not concern sociobiology only, but also some studies in evolutionary psychology.3 Quite understandably, the temptation to charge opponents with committing a fallacy – the naturalistic fallacy – is particularly strong when scientific research is connected with problems that require appropriate actions. When Rachel Carson put forward the

2

For instance, after clarifying the nature of the naturalistic fallacy, Kim Sterelny and Paul E. Griffiths (1999: 4 and 317) interestingly introduce the section devoted to Sociobiology with the title “The Fact/Value Swamp: Danger – Keep out!” 3 Cf. Gaulin and McBurney (2001: 16): “Evolutionary Psychology explains behaviour; it does not justify it. Imagining that it offers a justification is known as the naturalistic fallacy. In a nutshell, the naturalistic fallacy confuses ‘is’ with ‘ought’.”

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hypothesis that the use of DDT was threatening the balance of nature, many opponents accused her of crossing the divide between facts and values.4 The formidable rhetorical efficacy of charges such as these is captured by the expression coined by Max Black (1964): ‘Hume’s guillotine’. Committing the naturalistic fallacy does not literally involve losing one’s head, but it certainly means losing one’s reputation. In the chapter, I will focus on two theses. It will be seen that Hume’s ‘law’ – supposing that it has the same status as a law – is totally irrelevant to the ideal of value-free science. Its use in defence of the ideal may take on two different forms. First, Hume’s ‘law’ leads us to the embarrassing (and perhaps surprising) result that no value judgement put forward in a scientific investigation will ever commit the naturalistic fallacy. Following such a use, Hume’s ‘law’ would become prescriptively empty and thus useless in the defence of the ideal. The second case instead would allow the desired result to be attained: all value judgements are unacceptable in scientific research. However, following this second use, Hume’s ‘law’ turns out to be only a convoluted and redundant way to express the very same ideal the ‘law’ was supposed to justify. Since they are conceptually equivalent, it is misleading to think of Hume’s ‘law’ as a foundation of or justification for the ideal. I set out to defend a second thesis: the above-mentioned two uses of Hume’s ‘law’ tend to block scientific research. Together they prevent one from raising the following (legitimate, as we will see) question: Under what circumstances can scientific inquiry justify arguments that allow us to derive value judgements from factual premises? My point is that Hume’s ‘law’ blinds us as to why at times we should sensibly reject the passage from facts to values in scientific investigation. Far from improving scientific rigour, Hume’s ‘law’ actually impoverishes the scope of critical discussions concerning the fallacies scientists might commit when they try to derive value judgements from empirical research. Before broaching the subject, however, I should provide at least a brief historical reconstruction, which will also highlight the difficulty of defending the value-free ideal through the use of Hume’s ‘law’.

1.2

Henri Poincaré and the Distinction Between la science and la morale

As is well-known, it was George Edward Moore who coined the term ‘naturalistic fallacy’.5 Since then, the term has been used to include Hume’s position as well, even though their views are not exactly the same. Moore set out to criticize the

4 See for instance List (2008) and Barrotta (2009). I will soon come back to the research carried out by Carson. 5 For an excellent historical and analytical overview of the naturalistic fallacy, see Carcaterra (1969).

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metaphysical and naturalistic definitions of the good. Therefore, Moore’s naturalistic fallacy might better be defined as a ‘definist fallacy’ (cf. Frankena 1939). Instead Hume, following the standard interpretation, meant an inferential fallacy, since he argued that ought-sentences cannot be deduced by is-sentences. When speaking about the ‘naturalistic fallacy’, scientists and philosophers of science have Hume in mind, not Moore, and thus in what follows I shall confine myself to the Humean version of the fallacy,6 which, I repeat, in philosophy textbooks is stated in the following way: a value judgement cannot logically be derived from purely factual premises. From a historical viewpoint, it was in fact a scientist, Henri Poincaré, who offered the most elegant interpretation of Hume’s argument. In his essay, La science et la morale, Poincaré tries to defend the ideal of value-free science, and in so doing he offers a reconstruction of Hume’s ‘law’ which is both simple and precise. Poincaré argues that science and ethics belong to two different domains for reasons which he defines purement grammaticales. As he writes: 00 If the premises of a syllogism are both in the indicative, the conclusion will also be in the indicative. For the conclusion to have been stated in the imperative, at least one of the premises must itself have been in the imperative.00 (Poincaré 1917; Eng. trans. 103). Poincaré does not mention Hume, but his approach to the relationship between science and moral values is typically Humean. For instance, through a beautiful analogy he claims that reason is inert. For Poincaré, only moral sentiments can push human beings to act, since reason is like an engine which needs fuel to work, and the fuel can only be provided by human passions and sentiments.7 Poincaré indicates several ways in which science is useful to moral discourse without infringing Hume’s ‘law’. These involve influences defined as ‘indirect’, for they affect sentiments without directly intervening on rational discourse. He notes, for example, that love for the truth, which is typical of the scientific mentality, would have beneficial effects on the spirit of people, by educating them to intellectual honesty. Furthermore, science is a collective enterprise that teaches us that man is part of a wider natural harmony, thereby discouraging petty and selfish attitudes. Poincaré also notices a potential danger for morality due to the spread of the scientific mentality, though he tries to minimize its relevance. Science (at least, the science at Poincaré’s times) is fundamentally deterministic, and therefore it is incompatible with free will on which morality is based.

It is not surprising that scientists find Hume more interesting than Moore. Moore aimed at defending a specific ethical thesis, which appears far from scientists’ fields of interest. Hume’s empiricism must appear to them more familiar and relevant to scientific enquiry. 7 Cf. Poincaré (1917; Eng. trans. 103–4): “All dogmatic ethics, all demonstrative ethics are therefore doomed in advance to certain failure; it is like a machine with only transmission of motion, but without motor energy. The moral motor, the one which can set in motion all the apparatus of rods and gears, can only be something felt.00 Hume is explicit on this point as well. For instance, just to quote a couple of famous sentences, he writes: “Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent”, [. . .] “reason is perfectly inert, and can never either prevent or produce any action or affection” Hume (book III, part I, sec I. vol. 2: 235). 6

1.2 Henri Poincaré and the Distinction Between la science and la morale

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There is one more argument, which is different from those just analyzed, showing how science can interact with morality without infringing Hume’s ‘law’. It is an argument to which we will return when examining Dewey’s philosophy of values: the relationship between means and ends (see Sect. 5.1). Science can certainly help humankind by pointing out the means necessary to achieve a given goal or, in the case of a number of goals, by showing their mutual compatibility.8 As he argues, these kinds of judgements are within scientific enterprise. In this context, moral values are only hypothetically accepted. For example, sentences like: ‘If you want to achieve goal x, then you must do y’, do not commit the scientist to accept the given goal. The ‘must’ occurring in the sentence has no moral import, since it is only claimed that y is a necessary condition to achieve x, and this can be done through empirical analysis. As I have said, we will return to the means-ends relationship. Here, the only concern is with the interpretation of Hume’s ‘law’ provided by Poincaré. Poincaré’s line of argument is very simple. As any textbook on logic tells us, valid deductive inferences are non-ampliative, meaning that the content of the conclusion must be present in the premises. If in the premises we only have ‘isstatements’ (in the grammatical form of the indicative) in no way can we deductively derive ‘ought-sentences’ (in the grammatical form of the imperative), since the content of the conclusion blatantly exceeds the content of the premises. No doubt, Poincaré’s argument appears cogent precisely because it is as simple as the elementary logic upon which it is based. Yet, a more accurate analysis easily shows where its weakness lies. Poincaré’s argument would be convincing if we could reduce moral discourse to prescriptions, but this is not the case. Very simple moral judgements – such as ‘This is a bad boy’ – are in the indicative. When referring to Hume’s ‘law’ scientists would also like to exclude judgements like these from scientific investigations, and unfortunately the criterion provided by Poincaré is inadequate for the purpose. From a logical viewpoint, prescriptions require a modal logic, while value judgements use the same predicative logic that is used by any scientific statement. Through an elegant and simple interpretation of Hume’s ‘law’, Poincaré aimed to establish a clear-cut demarcation between science and ethics, but unfortunately he drew the line in the wrong place. Neither could we improve Poincaré’s argument by noting that value judgements trigger prescriptions. Obviously evaluations and prescriptions are connected, since

Cfr. Poincaré (1917; Eng. trans. 108): “If science proves to us that [. . .] one of these goals cannot be obtained without aiming at the other (and this is within the scope of science), it will have performed useful work; it will have rendered valuable assistance to the moralists00 . Hume himself is far from denying possible and legitimate interactions. For instance, he writes: “reason, in a strict and philosophical sense, can have influence on our conduct only in only two ways: Either when it excites a passion by informing us of the existence of something which is a proper object of it; or when it discovers the connexion of causes and effects, so as to afford us means of exerting any passion” (Hume, Book III, part I, sect. I, vol. 2: 236–7). Hume devotes to this issue the whole sect. 3, part III, book II, of his Treatise. 8

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1 Hume’s ‘Law’ and the Ideal of Value-Free Science

the former fairly often trigger the latter. Yet they are not the same from both a logical and conceptual viewpoint. We could state a moral judgement such as ‘This is a bad boy’ without stating the prescription ‘This boy ought to be punished’. Prescriptions are ‘all-things-considered’ sentences, which single out the best possible action. In other words, we need to consider all relevant factors. For instance, following our example, we need to take into consideration whether punishment is morally acceptable or if the psychology of the boy is such that punishment is self-defeating (of course, the former is moral in kind, while the latter is factual). Therefore, however connected they might be, prescriptions and value judgements are inherently different and identification would be inaccurate. It was previously mentioned that Poincaré provided an elegant interpretation of Hume’s ‘law’. Now the word ‘interpretation’ needs to be stressed, since Poincaré has actually considerably narrowed the scope of the philosophy of David Hume. The latter’s analyses are far from being purement grammaticales. Not only, as has already been noticed, is his ‘law’ connected with a theory of the meaning of terms, but when reading his body of work we find a complex set of moral terms and distinctions, such as ‘virtues’ and ‘vices’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘ought’ and ‘ought not’. Furthermore, he clearly takes into consideration both value judgements and prescriptions. He speaks about both “judgements by which we distinguish moral good and evil” and “multitude of rules and precepts, with which all moralists abound” (Hume 1964, book III, part I, sect. I, vol. 2: 234–5). Poincaré’s attempt is ingenuous. It provides scientists with an elegant argument that is probably still quite common nowadays. However, it is clearly inadequate for the defence of value-free science. As a consequence, we still have to find a way to justify the ideal through Hume’s ‘law’.

1.3

The Different Uses of Hume’s ‘Law’

We have seen that Hume’s ‘law’ is understood to be an inferential fallacy in which the concept of derivation needs to be clarified. Once more, Poincaré provides us with a clear answer: by ‘derivation’ we should mean a syllogistic derivation. Once again, Poincare’s admirable clarity enables us to understand the limitations of the answer easily. Why should we use syllogistics? As soon as we move from syllogistics to elementary propositional calculus, the impossibility of deriving not only value judgements, but even prescriptions from factual sentences becomes less obvious. Many philosophers and logicians let their imaginations run wild in order to find counterexamples. Prior (1960) suggested the following: ‘Tea-drinking is common in England; therefore either tea-drinking is common in England or all new Zealanders ought to be shot’. Following Poincaré’s grammatical criterion, we should claim that the conclusion is moral in kind (an ought-sentence occurs in the conclusion). Thus, since the inference is formally valid in propositional calculus, we have an example showing that moral conclusions can be derived from factual premises.

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I do not want to attach much weight to Prior’s counterexample. Inferences such as these would strike scientists as too abstract and far from scientific practice. Furthermore, counterexamples like Prior’s might rightly disconcert those readers who are not accustomed to the shortcomings of standard logic when it is used to reconstruct the way people argue (one could legitimately wonder what is the relevance of the premise – which concerns an innocuous tradition in a country – to the conclusion – which is about the slaughter of a whole population in another country). Yet, it is still worth delving deeper into the topic, since this will introduce my thesis: Hume’s ‘law’ does not provide any justification for the ideal of value-free science, and furthermore its use in defence of the ideal works in such a way as to block scientific investigations. These counterexamples raise a legitimate question: if we drop the idea that only a single system of logic exists, how can we understand when the naturalistic fallacy has been committed? When proposing his argumentation theory, Stephen Toulmin (1958) argued that appropriate inferential rules are dependent on the context – on what he called the ‘fields of argument’. Toulmin does not critically discuss the naturalistic fallacy, but it is apparent that in his model it is logically possible to derive moral judgements from factual premises. Elsewhere he himself speaks about “a form of inference peculiar to ethical arguments by which we pass from factual reasons to an ethical conclusion – what we might naturally call ‘evaluative’ inference” (Toulmin 1950: 38). Thus, for instance, in the ethical field of argument we might legitimately claim that the following inference is perfectly sound: ‘F is false, therefore do not say F’, where the inference rule is ‘Do not say anything which is false’. Here, we have a rule allowing us to infer a moral conclusion from factual premises. Those who are used to formal logic would immediately object that the argument is actually an enthymeme. In their view, ‘Do not say anything which is false’ is not an inference rule, but the missing premise which makes that argument valid through the use of the inference rules of formal logic. After making the missing premise explicit, the inference no longer violates Hume’s ‘law, for we now have an ethical norm in the premises. In the history of the debate on the naturalistic fallacy, the enthymematic stratagem is frequently referred to in order to save Hume’s ‘law’ (cf. Carcaterra 1969: 160 ff.), and in fact this line of reasoning has actually been developed against Toulmin, as well.9 In the philosophy of logic the enthymematic strategy is, however, looked upon with suspicion, since it leads us to a questionable conservatism. As Massey (1976: 89-90) nicely puts it:

Cf. Kerner: (1966: 103–4): “Toulmin has not [. . .] shown us that the connexion between a moral judgment and its reasons is a logical one. He will not be able to show this unless he is willing to say that a moral code is a kind of logical organon. But to say this would be extremely problematic. It would tend to eradicate the difference between the logical tools by which a subject-matter is investigated and the subject matter itself. [. . .] It may be claimed that what Toulmin took to be the form of the most simple sort of moral argument is really an enthymeme. [. . .] When viewed in this manner, moral argument does not seem to exhibit any special form of inference.” 9

10

1 Hume’s ‘Law’ and the Ideal of Value-Free Science Contemporary students of logic sometimes express amazement at the obstinacy of traditional logicians who did not immediately renounce their impoverished logic when the incomparably richer logic of Frege and Whitehead-Russell appeared. There is little to marvel at; their resort to the enthymematic ploy made them oblivious to the limitations of their logic, just as it makes modern logicians oblivious to the shortcomings of theirs. The enthymematic ploy is a panacea, not for remedying a logic’s deficiencies, but for rendering them invisible. [. . .] Enthymeme and suppressed premiss [sic] are psychological notions, not logical ones

Thus, the enthymematic stratagem amounts to blocking research in logic. At this point in the discussion, attention must be drawn to the question of the blocking of research. For the sake of argument, let us accept that we live in a world where we have only one kind of logic, namely the syllogistics which Poincaré referred to. In this world, the problem raised by Massey (and Toulmin) would not be posed, since we have assumed (as Kant did) that logic has been completed. This concession is rather strong, but it leads us to the thesis I want to defend: the enthymematic stratagem would continue to act as a research stopper, even though it would block research in science and morals, but not in logic. It is quite obvious that through the enthymematic stratagem we could validate any kind of argument, even those arguments which intuitively represent the most blatant cases of naturalistic fallacy. Let us take what we might call naturalistic optimism, meaning by that the axiological approval of faits accomplis. If we unreasonably accepted this kind of naturalism we would be entitled to claim that the following argument is sound: ‘Hitler invaded Poland in 1939. Therefore, Hitler was right to invade Poland in 1939’. John Dewey, who throughout his life defended the idea of a scientific, empirically founded, morality, would find this kind of ‘optimism’ simply outrageous. Yet, naturalistic optimism would provide the ‘missing premise’ which makes the argument free from the charge of naturalistic fallacy. I will call any sentence which supplies the missing premise from which we are allowed to validly infer a value judgement from factual premises the bridge-principle. The problem which I am concerned with is that it is impossible to find a solution to the abuse of the enthymematic stratagem from the point of view of those who try to vindicate the ideal of value-free science thanks to Hume’s ‘law’. Scientists and philosophers who use Hume’s ‘law’ to defend the ideal overlook the consequences of the enthymematic stratagem, even though from time to time they surface in discussions about the real scope of the naturalistic fallacy. For instance, in the journal Biology and Philosophy I found this defence of Herbert Spencer (D. S. Wilson et al. 2003: 672): however much we might disagree with Spencer, he is not committing the fallacy attributed to him. Spencer is not justifying these social practices because they are natural, but because they benefit society in the long run. [By supplying the relevant missing premise] his argument can be stated more formally as follows: The incapable become impoverished [. . .], and the weak are shouldered aside by the strong (factual premise); A society of capable [. . .] and strong individuals is [. . .] better than a society of incapable [. . .] and weak individuals (ethical premise); [Therefore] [T]he processes that create a society of capable [. . .] and strong individuals are ethically benevolent (ethical conclusion). [. . .] Of course,

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this does not mean that Spencer is correct. [. . .] What we cannot do is dismiss the argument on the grounds that it commits some sort of elementary fallacy.10

In the paper, the authors argue that the factual investigations carried out in evolutionary psychology are relevant to ethics (which is a reasonable claim), but they unintentionally end up with something different: the defence of Spencer through the use of the enthymematic stratagem. If it had not been Spencer who committed the naturalistic fallacy, I wonder who it could have been. Along a very similar line of reasoning, we could defend E. O. Wilson, sociobiology, and whoever we are willing to defend. Through the use (or rather the abuse) of the enthymematic stratagem, Hume’s ‘law’ would become prescriptively empty and consequently no one, including scientists, could ever be accused of committing the naturalistic fallacy. The problem raised by the enthymematic stratagem is that we all want to continue to use the notion of naturalistic fallacy in scientific inquiry. If we take, for the sake of argument, sociobiology as a paradigmatic example of naturalistic fallacy, we must find a way to claim that it commits the fallacy. In cases like this, we want to claim that value-judgements do not follow from scientific inquiry. This implies that we need to assess the bridge-principle proposed by the scientist, which allows him or her to derive value judgments from some facts. Thus, and obviously, to reject the enthymematic stratagem in scientific inquiry we need to move from formally valid arguments to sound arguments. This can be done in two ways. As we will see, the first option is compatible with the ideal of value-free science, but it makes Hume’s ‘law’ irrelevant to the defence of the ideal. The second option is instead incompatible with the ideal. In this chapter, I do not intend to offer arguments against the ideal of value-free science (though we will start seeing its shortcomings). This will be done in the following chapters. Here I simply want to show the irrelevance of Hume’s ‘law’ to its defence. Thus, let us begin with the first option. It could be argued that in scientific inquiry the enthymematic stratagem is in itself illegitimate specifically because it uses bridge-principles. No connection of this kind should be admitted in scientific inquiry. We should not forget that bridge-principles are moral in nature, since they start with some facts and come to moral conclusions. Spencer’s argument might be accepted or not. However, this issue belongs to ethics, but not to science. This is why Spencer’s argument is scientifically unacceptable. All things considered, this is precisely why Hume’s ‘law’ is so important. The reason why this answer is inadequate is all too obvious. This option is the same as claiming: ‘We should not accept bridge-principles in the language of science. Maybe bridge-principles can be critically discussed, but their assessment goes beyond the task of science!’. This is hardly anything different from reiterating

However, I agree with their following statement: “the naturalistic fallacy cannot be used to ward off ethical debated the way that a crucifix is supposed to ward off vampires” (Wilson et al. 2003: 674). As we will see, my point is that we should distinguish between a legitimate and an illegitimate use of the naturalistic fallacy.

10

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the very same ideal of value-free science. In this context, any reference to Hume’s ‘laws’ is simply pointless. In slightly different terms, we are facing a vicious circle. We started with the attempt to justify the ideal of value-free science through the use of Hume’s ‘law’, and eventually we end up with using the ideal of value-free science to claim that in scientific inquiry no value judgement can be derived from factual premises thanks to bridge-principles, since they infringe Hume’s ‘law’. Hume’s ‘law’ was supposed to provide a logical foundation for the ideal. This was the intention of both Poincaré and many scientists who have followed him. Now, Hume’s ‘law’ has become just a convoluted and redundant way to claim that moral values must be foreign to science. It no longer points to a particular fallacy, it has simply become another way to restate the very same ideal that it was supposed to establish. The second option for scientists is to critically discuss the argument moving from facts to values. This is the more plausible choice, since we very often need to examine the details of a theory to understand the way values are derived from some facts. When scientists are committed to defending moral judgements, we examine the bridge-principles they propose, namely the kind of connection they established. This option claims that some bridge-principles are scientifically acceptable, while others are not. Let us take the case of E. O. Wilson and sociobiology. In this case, we should not reject the passage from facts to values because sociobiology breaks a simple inferential rule – Hume’s ‘law’. As we have seen, in itself the objection could easily be overcome thanks to the enthymematic stratagem. We should reject the derivation of values from facts because in the work by Wilson we do not find any convincing bridge-principle which has been clearly stated and defended. This point is clarified by Philip Kitcher, who is the author of one of the most incisive critiques of sociobiology: sociobiology makes no serious attempt to face up to the naturalistic fallacy – to pinpoint the conditions under which normative assertions can be garnered from biological premises and to show that moral principles of the new scientific ethics really do stand in proper relation to the biological findings. (If the naturalistic fallacy is not a fallacy, then there will be some good arguments from factual premises to normative conclusions. That does not mean that every argument from fact to value compels our assent). All we have been offered is a stark juxtaposition of a biological commonplace [. . .] with a statement allegedly encapsulating a ‘cardinal value’ [. . .]. The connection is left as an exercise for the reader. After studying the exercise, it is not surprising that critics are tempted to exclaim ‘Fallacy!’. (Kitcher 1985: 430).

To repeat once more, sociobiology commits the naturalistic fallacy not because of an inferential law, but because we find no bridge-principle which is seriously elaborated and defended. It is worth summarising what has been said so far. It is useful to fix ideas on the conceptual consequences of accepting all, no, or some bridge-principles in scientific inquiry. The enthymematic stratagem raises the issue that in principle all arguments could be saved from the charge of committing the naturalistic fallacy. In fact, it is sufficient to introduce a bridge-principle, however arbitrary it might be, connecting factual premises and moral conclusions. Accordingly, we could argue that even Spencer and Wilson did not commit any fallacy. To avoid this awkward result, we have two

1.3 The Different Uses of Hume’s ‘Law’

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options. The first option is compatible with the ideal, but the use of Hume’s ‘law’ becomes redundant. Whenever we come across scientists who, qua scientist, uphold value judgments through the use of bridge-principles we are entitled to claim that they are committing the naturalistic fallacy. This option is tantamount to claiming that in the language of science no value judgments should be accepted. Instead of providing the ideal with a justification, this use of Hume’s law presupposes the very ideal that it should vindicate. The second option is instead clearly incompatible with the ideal of value-free science. When scientists, qua scientists, are committed to defending value-judgments, we first examine the bridge-principle they uphold. Throughout scientific inquiry, some bridge-principles are eventually considered as poorly conceived, while others are considered to be well founded. Accordingly, scientists may be right to defend value judgements. Their defence is not arbitrary if they are able to establish some good bridgeprinciples that support the values they are committed to defend. What has been argued so far leads us to a second thesis: the use of Hume’s ‘law’ in defence of value-free science tends to block scientific research. In fact, if the enthymematic stratagem is not rejected then all value judgments comply with the ‘law’ thanks to any bridge-principle suitable for the purpose; a conclusion which is definitely too liberal, since we could save even sociobiology from the charge of naturalistic fallacy. In so doing, this option deprives scientists of possible strong arguments when assessing scientific theories, since they are never in a position to claim that the naturalistic fallacy has been committed. As an alternative, if we reject the enthymematic stratagem by claiming that no value judgment is acceptable in scientific inquiry then Hume’s law equally functions as a research stopper, but in a different way. In fact, those scientists who, qua scientists, want to defend value judgments are deprived of the possibility of showing the basis of their value judgments through appropriate and well-conceived bridge-principles. The only option that does not block research is to allow values to play a role in scientific inquiry. When scientists defend values, we should say that some bridge-principles are well conceived, while others are not. Fortunately, scientific practice usually follows the right option. Moreover, it could not do otherwise, since, as we will see in the following chapters, facts and values are necessarily intertwined in scientific inquiry. The ideal of value-free science is more an ideology of science than an analysis of good scientific practices, though it can be an intimidating ideology.11 11

Maybe it is interesting to mention a seminar I attended. On that occasion, it was argued that bridge-principles do not necessarily imply moral commitments on the part of the scientist. Bridgeprinciples could be reconstructed as hypothetical ways of arguing. Accordingly, scientists might critically discuss bridge-principles without infringing Hume’s ‘law’, for instance by working out their consequences “for the sake of argument”, thereby without being committed to defending value judgements. This objection is extremely weak. Wilson, Spencer, Carson and many others did not propose their bridge-principles as hypothetical propositions. Why should we reconstruct them that way? The only answer is that we must defend the ideal of value-free science. More than an objection, the argument boils down to a petitio principii. Later on, we will see the reasons underlying arguments of this kind, which represent typical instances of what Dewey called the “philosophical fallacy” (see, Sect. 2.3).

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Finally, it is worth noting that this option leads us to define the naturalistic fallacy differently. In scientific inquiry, the naturalistic fallacy is a misnomer if it is understood as an inferential fallacy. Rather, within scientific research the fallacy points to an argument using ill-conceived bridge-principles. This last point needs further elaboration. I have not questioned the logical validity of Hume’s ‘law’ (although, as we have seen, it should not be understood as a dogma), but its use in scientific discussion. There is a sense in which the use of Hume’s ‘law’ in scientific inquiry is legitimate and fruitful. However, in this sense Hume’s ‘law’ takes on a moral (not simply logical) connotation: we must be intellectually honest and not state conclusions that are not guaranteed by sound arguments, or, similarly, we must avoid moving from factual to moral aspects without sufficiently binding justifications. If we accepted its former (logical) sense, we would have formal rules allowing us to pinpoint the fallacy quite easily. Instead, in the latter (moral and dialectical) sense charges of fallacy should be the result of careful assessment. This kind of fallacy is not easily identifiable, since we have to enter into the details of a scientific theory or hypothesis in order to understand where, and if, the fallacy is committed. It is in this sense, and only in this sense, that Hume’s ‘law’ is a stimulus to research and critical discussion. However, such a use is compatible with inquiries laden with moral values. If, instead, Hume’s ‘law’ is interpreted in such a way as to prohibit value judgments in scientific inquiry, then it becomes a formidable weapon of (poor) rhetoric, a real ‘guillotine’ with which to behead those who dare to cross the border between facts and values. So far, the discussion has been extremely abstract. Probably too abstract a discussion to be rhetorically convincing. However, I can illustrate its content through an example. In this book, readers will often find historical examples the aim of which is to clarify philosophical arguments. I have previously mentioned two cases – those of Spencer and Wilson – where the derivation of moral conclusions has been almost unanimously rejected. To strengthen the thesis that some (and only some) bridge-principles are scientifically defensible, I will propose an example drawn from ecology. We will see why a bridge-principle was initially accepted as plausible and subsequently rejected thanks to scientific research.

1.4

An Example: The Balance of Nature

The idea that nature exhibits a balance among both animal populations and plant communities traces back to antiquity. Nature was viewed as a beneficent force, a view which was deeply intertwined with broader cosmological and theological concepts (cf. Egerton 1973). Evidence for a divine design was seen in celestial phenomena and natural history, as well as in the relationships among organisms, organisms and their environment, and even among human beings themselves (cf. McIntosh 1985). Herodotus believed that predators and prey were providentially endowed with different reproductive capabilities in order to maintain their number

1.4 An Example: The Balance of Nature

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unchanged (cf. Egerton 1973). As is well known, Charles Darwin rejected the idea of a Divine Providence, but in his work the concept of a balance of nature continues to play an important role. As Darwin (2004, Ch. 3: 86) claimed in an often-quoted passage: “Battle within battle must ever be recurring with varying success; and yet in the long-run the forces are so nicely balanced, that the face of nature remain uniform for long periods of time, though assuredly the merest trifle would often give the victory to one organic being over another.” Thus it is not surprising that the concept has continued to exert its influence today. Environmental movements have developed also thanks to the belief that nature is endowed with a feedback system which ought to be left working undisturbed. In the 1960s, Rachel Carson skilfully used it to defend nature against human arrogance. In her complaint relating to the indiscriminate use of DDT and pesticides, Carson writes in Silent Spring: “The balance of nature is not the same today as in Pleistocene times, but it is still there: a complex, precise, and highly integrated system of relationships between living things which cannot safely be ignored any more than the law of gravity can be defied with impunity by a man perched on the edge of a cliff. [. . .] The ‘control’ of nature is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man” (Carson 2000: 215 and 257). The presence of facts and values in passages like this has understandably alarmed the upholders of the ideal of value-free science. We have already noticed that Carson was hastily accused of inaccurate science because she rashly crossed the line between scientific facts and moral values (List 2008; Barrotta 2009). The charge of using facts in an unscientific way emerged even in the obituary published by the magazine Time: “despite her scientific training, [Carson] rejected facts that weakened her case, while using almost any material, regardless of authenticity, that seemed to support her thesis” (quoted by Hawkins 1994: 132). In favour of this harsh judgment, one could cite chapter 14 of Silent Spring, where Carson affirmed the existence of a link between cancer and the use of pesticides, although this relationship was far from proved.12 Two remarks should be made on this point. The first, which I will develop later on, concerns the concept of scientific rationality. Scientific rationality does not apply to individual scientists, but to the community of inquirers (see Sects. 4.1 and 6.1). Carson was certainly one-sided in assessing empirical evidence, but one has to consider that she was fighting against another form of one-sidedness. Because of excessive specialization, entomologists tended to underestimate the systematic effects of pesticides in the food chain and the balance of nature. It was through mutual criticism that the prejudices of both parties emerged. The one-sidedness of Carson must surely be emphasized, but it is undeniable that it has also had positive effects on research.

Carson is intelligently cautious on this point. However, at the end of the chapter states: “The chemical agents of cancer have become entrenched in our world” (Carson 2000: 213), suggesting that pesticides have an important role as a causative factor. 12

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The second issue, which directly concerns us here, is connected with Hume’s ‘law’. There is no doubt that Carson constantly moves from factual issues to moral judgments. However, this is not sufficient to argue that her arguments are an instance of naturalistic fallacy. Hume’s ‘law’ cannot function as a litmus test that allows us to detect the fallacy in a simple and direct manner. Yet, this is the way it has been used to dismiss the idea of ‘balance of nature’. In the years of the fiery controversy raised by Carson, we do not find explicit references to Hume’s ‘law’, albeit critics implicitly referred to it when accusing Carson of violating the boundary between facts and values, thereby betraying the spirit of science (cf. List 2008; Barrotta 2009). The use of Hume’s ‘law’ is therefore always present during the dispute, although it has the role of an implicit assumption, which is not even necessary to explain, since it is deeply entrenched into common mentality. When the most heated controversies abated, and the technical language of philosophers came to the forefront, appeals to Hume’s ‘law’ and the naturalistic fallacy became apparent. It should come as no surprise that Dieter Birnbacher (1980) has more recently accused environmental movements of committing the naturalistic fallacy when referring to the concept of a balance of nature. For him, the balance-of-nature concept is the main cause of the confusion between facts and moral evaluations. Science and value judgements are divided by a logical gulf, which no one is allowed to ignore. He is rather trenchant in his claim: “The ‘naturalistic fallacy’ is primarily prompted by a concept as ‘balance of nature’, which in itself is purely descriptive, but is too often interpreted as normative by laypeople of ecology, as if ‘balance’ were eo ipso the only desirable, true optimal state of a system, which should be maintained as long as possible or implemented as quickly as possible” (Birnbacher 1980: 108, Eng. trans. is mine). Criticisms like this, however, overlook the fact that Carson and environmentalists have proposed bridge-principles connecting facts (the stability of populations) and values (the respect for nature). Consider for instance the following passages: It took hundreds of millions of years to produce the life that now inhabits the earth [. . .]. Given time – time not in years but in millennia – life adjusts, and a balance has been reached. For time is the essential ingredient; but in the modern world there is no time [. . .]. Sometimes we have no choice but disturb these relationships, but we should do so thoughtfully, with full awareness that what we do may have consequences remote in time and space. (Carson 2000: 24 and 69).

Carson is telling us that so complex a balance, which has required adjustments taking a very long span of time, cannot be disturbed without unintended and unforeseeable consequences. Therefore, it is better for us to respect the balance of nature and disturb it as little as possible. These are strong arguments, which allow us to move from facts to values. It would be pedantic to reconstruct Carson’s argument formally (the ‘bridge-principle’ would very probably be: ‘Thanks to a system of complex interactions nature tends towards a harmonious balance which should be left undisturbed as much as possible, since the size of each population is perfectly adapted to the environment and the size of the other populations’). The basic point here is that we do not have just a juxtaposition of factual statements and value judgements. Carson’s rhetoric was persuasive thanks to a careful data collection

1.4 An Example: The Balance of Nature

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which gave evidence as to why humankind should be very cautious about interfering with an equilibrium achieved through a slow and complex evolution. Although Carson’s arguments were persuasive, they needed further in-depth study. Her bridge-principle (no matter how it could be specified) uses a key-notion: ‘tendency toward a balance’. The problem was that the real meaning of balance-of-nature concept was left ambiguous for centuries. What does the claim that a feedback system allows nature to achieve a ‘balance’ mean exactly? Without a clear definition of the concept, it is difficult to understand whether equilibrium points really exist and nature shows a spontaneous tendency towards them. There are, no doubt, many observations that seem to cogently support the existence of a balance. When visiting a wood after many years, if traumatic events generally caused by human action have not occurred in the meantime, we will find the relative size of animal populations unchanged, as well as the composition of vegetable kingdom. It appears that ecosystems clearly show a remarkable stability. A place where an oak wood dominates has obviously different characteristics from a cactus desert, and such differences persist well beyond the life of any human being. Yet, these are not rigorous observations, since they adopt the spans of time which human beings are used to: hours, days, or even decades. If we go beyond these observations and we do not embrace an anthropocentric perspective any longer, can we still claim that nature shows a tendency towards some kind of equilibrium? It is necessary to be rigorous about the real meaning of ‘balance of nature’. Only in this way could we gauge the distance of an ecosystem from its equilibrium point and its alleged tendency to reach it. Unhappy with these ambiguities, ecologists have made it clear that balance of nature may have different meanings. For instance, Redfearn and Pimm (1987) distinguish between stability (when the species densities tend to return to their equilibrium values following disturbances), resilience (how fast a population returns to equilibrium), persistence (how long a system endures), resistance (the tendency of a system to remain unchanged), and variability (which includes measurements concerning variance, standard deviation, etc., of populations over time). Through analyses like this, the scientific consensus has dramatically changed. Thanks to both conceptual and empirical investigations, the scientific community today maintains that the uniqueness of historical evolution prevails over the alleged existence of non-historical equilibria.13 In other words, nature exhibits no tendency towards a balance. The bridge-principle suggested by Carson was legitimate, since it was supported by a millenary tradition and countless everyday observations available to everyone. Eventually it was rejected. Yet, this did not happen through the use of Hume’s ‘law’, but due to scientific investigations which have had consequences in both ecology

13

In this regard, the controversy between Nicholson, on the one hand, and Andrewartha and Birch, on the other, is both historically and conceptually insightful. For a philosophical discussion of the controversy, see Cooper (2003), especially Chaps. 2 and 3. For a more popular analysis of the empirical and conceptual weakness of the notion of a balance of nature see Kricher (2009).

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and the political and moral sphere. Today, we know more about the way nature works and, as has been noted, the concept of biodiversity is more suitable for justifying the respect of nature, along with, it is hardly necessary to say, a better understanding of the ways such respect should be implemented.14 In this preliminary chapter, I have showed why we cannot use Hume’s ‘law” in defence of the ideal of value-free science. In this context, its use is just an example of bad rhetoric. The following chapters directly address the role of values in scientific inquiry.

References Barrotta, P. (2009). Facts and values in ecology. Philosophical insights from Rachel Carson’s silent spring. Revista Physis, 1-1, 58–77. Birnbacher, D. (1980). Sind wir für die Natur verantwortlich. In Ökologie und Ethik (pp. 284–299). Stuttgart: Reclam. Black, M. (1964). The gap between ‘Is’ and ‘Ought’. Philosophical Review, 73-2, 165–181. Carcaterra, G. (1969). Il problema della fallacia naturalistica. Milan: Giuffré. Carson, R. (2000). Silent spring (1st ed., 1962). London: Penguin Books. Cooper, G. J. (2003). The science of the struggle for existence. On the foundations of ecology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Darwin, C. (2004). The origin of species (1st ed., 1859). London: Collector’s Library. Dewey, J. (1925). Experience and nature. In Dewey (1969–1991). The collected works (J. A. Boydstone Ed.). Southern Illinois University Press. (The later works, Vol. 1). Dewey, J. (1929). The quest for certainty. In Dewey (1969–1991). The collected works. (The later works, Vol. 4). Egerton, F. N. (1973). Changing concepts of the balance of nature. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 48(2), 322–350. Frankena, W. K. (1939). The naturalistic fallacy. Mind, 48(192), 464–477. Gaulin, S. J. C., & McBurney, D. H. (2001). Psychology: An evolutionary approach. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall. Hawkins, T. B. (1994). Re-reading Silent Spring. In T. B. Dunlap (Ed.), DDT, Silent spring, and the rise of environmentalism, (pp. 130–135). Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008. Hume, D. (1964). A treatise of human nature, 1739–40. In Philosophical works (Vol. 1–2), reprinted of the new edition London 1886 (T. H. Green & T. H. Grose Eds.). Aalen: Scientia Verlag. Kerner, J. (1966). The revolution in ethical theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kitcher, P. (1985). Vaulting ambition. Sociobiology and the quest for human nature. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Kricher, J. (2009). The balance of nature. Ecology’s enduring myth. Princeton: Princeton University Press. List, P. C. (2008). Rachel Carson and George J. Wallace: Why public environmental scientists should advocate for nature. In L. H. Sideris & K. D. Moore (Eds.), Rachel Carson. Legacy and challenge (pp. 41–57). Albany: State University of New York. Massey, G. (1976). Tom, dick, and harry, and all the king’s men. American Philosophical Quarterly, 13–3, 89–107.

14

Cf. Kricher (2009), Chap. 13, and Sarkar (2005)

References

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McIntosh, R. P. (1985). The background of ecology. Concepts and theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Poincaré, H. (1908). Le valeur de la science (1st ed., 1905); English Trans. The value of science, essential writings of Henri Poincaré. New York: The Modern Library, 2001. Poincaré, H. (1917). La Morale et la Science. In Dernières Pensées (1st ed., 1913); English Trans. Ethics and science. In Mathematics and science: Last essays (pp. 102–113). New York: Dover Publications, 1963. Polanyi, M. (1951). The logic of liberty. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Popper, K. (1948). What can logic do for philosophy? Aristotelian Society. Supplementary Volume, 22, 141–154. Prior, A. N. (1960). The autonomy of ethics. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 38(3), 199–206. Proctor, R. N. (1991). Value-free science? Purity and power in modern knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Putnam, H. (2002). The collapse of the fact/value dichotomy and other essays. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Redfearn, A., & Pimm, S. L. (1987). Stability in ecological community. In D. R. Keller & F. B. Golley (Eds.), The philosophy of ecology (Vol. 2000, pp. 124–131). Athens/London: The University of Georgia Press. Robbins, L. (1932). An essay on the nature and significance of economic science (2nd ed.). London: Macmillan. Sarkar, S. (2005). Biodiversity and environmental philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sterelny, K., & Griffiths, P. E. (1999). Sex and death. An introduction to philosophy of biology. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press. Toulmin, S. (1950). The place of reason in ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Toulmin, S. (1958). The uses of argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. White, G. M. (1949). Value and obligation in Dewey and Lewis. The Philosophical Review, lviii, 321–329. Wilson, E. O. (1975). Sociobiology. The new synthesis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wilson, D. S., Dietrich, E., & Clark, A. (2003). On the inappropriate use of the naturalistic fallacy in evolutionary psychology. Biology and Philosophy, 18, 669–682.

Chapter 2

Concepts, Values, and Scientific Measurements

Abstract Whereas in the first chapter I explained the illegitimate use of Hume’s ‘law’ in defence of value-free science, in this chapter we will begin to see positive arguments showing why science is not morally neutral. At least in some cases, moral values determine the meaning of the descriptive terms used in science. These terms, therefore, are both descriptive and evaluative. To understand this statement, I will explain the nature of the pragmatic maxim, by which the meaning of all concepts is established. The chapter concludes with an analysis of cognitive or epistemic values. Keywords Biodiversity · Capabilities · Entanglement (see fact/value dualism) · Fact/value dualism, Hume’s fork · Meaning (m. of objects, m. of ideas, connotation, denotation, see pragmatic maxim) · Philosophical fallacy · Pragmatic maxim · Science (pure and applied; as an activity vs. as a system of assertions) · Species · Technology (language as a t.) · Thick and thin Concepts · Value-free science · Values (moral, cognitive) · Welfare economics

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Many admit that individual scientists must assume moral responsibilities when undertaking particular activities. Take, for instance, a scientist who practises vivisection on animals for his research. He could no doubt justify his decision to do so in many ways. For example, he could argue that sacrificing laboratory animals is a necessary price to pay to save human lives. However, this is clearly a moral price for which he takes the responsibility.1 This point is reasonably widely accepted therefore it would be useless to insist on it to defend the moral reach of scientific research. It would be the same as picking on a polemical puppet, which could only rhetorically weaken one of the main theses of this book. On the other hand, if science is taken to be understood as a body of knowledge, it is a different matter. In this case, the unwillingness to accept the moral reach of 1 On the debate on the moral justification of vivisection, see the well-balanced discussion by LaFollette and Shanks (1996).

© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 P. Barrotta, Scientists, Democracy and Society, Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning 16, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74938-9_2

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scientific knowledge is widespread. As Massimo Negrotti wrote (2011: 90) in what appears to be a slogan of great rhetorical effect: “Neutrality of science, not of scientists. This was, and still is, my conviction even though [. . .] I must point out that, instead of the term ‘neutrality’ I would prefer the expression indifference of science [. . .] with regard to ethical issues.” The reasons for what Negrotti calls the ‘indifference’ of science to ethics appear very intuitive and can be summarised as follows: the empirical meaning of a theory, its cognitive scope, seems to be entirely independent of moral evaluations. If, for example, I say ‘Water boils at 100 degrees at sea level,” the truth-value of this statement does not depend on judgments of a moral nature. We may or may not like this property of water (perhaps, it would be useful if it boiled more easily), but the truth of the assertion is independent of these or other evaluations. It rather depends on the facts. If water boils at 100 degrees, the statement is true, otherwise it is false. If science is understood as a system of assertions and concepts, it seems obvious that moral values are completely irrelevant to defining its content. The only relevant thing to consider is whether they are true or false. Even those who appear sensitive to the connections between science and morality do not question this assumption. At most, the moral dimension begins to emerge when science is understood as an activity, a set of actions, not just a set of propositions or other linguistic entities that represent the body of scientific knowledge. As, for example, Evandro Agazzi wrote (1992: 18) in a book that has nonetheless very carefully investigated the connections between science and morality: If we restrict ourselves to consider [science] as a set of knowledge (i.e. if we consider only its contents) then science is of no ethical relevance. But as soon as we see that it is also a human activity – that is to say, an activity that aims to produce such knowledge – we have to conclude that it cannot sidestep the general conditions of every human activity: namely, that it is guided by choices inspired by value judgments.

Let us return to the case of vivisection. What Agazzi says is that the practice of vivisection is morally questionable, even if it is needed to acquire new knowledge and this has important technological repercussions. Yet, this does not imply that the empirical meaning, the truth content of the new knowledge learned through carrying out vivisection, does depend on moral considerations. This line of thought also leads to the renowned distinction between pure science and applied science. While the sole purpose of the former is the truth, the second also acknowledges other objectives of a moral nature. Again, Agazzi’s book (1992: 14) gives a good example: Once it has been admitted that the specific purpose of pure science is the search for truth, it is clearly immune in itself to any moral objection [. . .]. The situation regarding applied science is quite different. In it the search for truth is only a secondary purpose, while the primary one consists of some practical realisation, which immediately implies the existence of ethically relevant issues.

As we will see (see. Sect. 4.3), the dichotomy between pure science and applied science is tersely rejected by pragmatists, particularly by Dewey, who wrote scathingly on the “invidious distinction between theory and practice, the alleged

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difference being expressed in a fixed logical difference between ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ sciences” (Dewey 1938: 433). The problem that I would like to highlight here is however, another, albeit closely connected. If the problem is the moral neutrality of science, the dichotomy between pure science and applied science does not clarify anything, in fact it greatly confuses the terms of the argument. Actually, what counts is not the existence of ‘secondary’ or ‘primary’ purposes, to use Agazzi’s terminology, but their linguistic formulation. Let us examine the logical form of a simple statement of applied science, which we have already encountered: ‘If you want to achieve goal y, then you must do x’, where goal y is of a practical nature. The statement will be true or false irrespective of the moral acceptability of goal y since, it could be argued, the statement merely sets out the conditions necessary to achieve the desired purpose. In this way, indifference towards morality concerns pure knowledge as much as it concerns applied knowledge. What is important is the separation of the content of a statement from the actions or activities which are based on it. Certainly, this process of isolating the empirical meaning of a statement from the actions that can be attributed to it must be brought to its extreme consequences. Strictly speaking, even declaring the sentence ‘If you want to achieve goal y, then you must do x’ is an action that may have moral characteristics (we will also come back to this, see Sect. 5.4), but remains the point in principle: understood in its content, linguistically expressed, its truth or falseness does not depend on any moral evaluation. Pragmatism specifically questions ‘the point in principle.’ The idea of a content without any moral evaluations is like an apparently unassailable ‘citadel’ in which to take retreat in the face of attack from those who question the moral neutrality of science. From here, they would then be able to regain lost ground as demonstrated by the possibility of considering morality-independent technology. In the last few decades, many have tried to conquer the citadel. In the Introduction, I have generically mentioned the constructivists, but I could have been more specific by quoting the feminist epistemologies, the post-modernists, the strong programme in the sociology of science, and various other schools of thought, all of whom are more or less united in refusing both the ideal of value-free science and that of its objectivity. Pragmatists must be seen as a separate movement. They intend to reject the ideal of morally neutral science, but not the ideal of objective science. To use another metaphor, for pragmatists one should be careful not to throw out the baby with the bath water. An argument of this book is that only by following this pragmatist path will it be possible to understand the link between science and democracy, the two pillars of Western civilisation. In this section, I will address a quite specific topic, albeit an essential step to conquer the citadel. I will try to define what the pragmatic maxim consists of, the purpose of which is to clarify the meaning of the concepts used in science and in everyday life. This principle was first formulated by Peirce in his famous essay “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” and then modified in the “Issues of Pragmaticism”. The modified version is without doubt better than the first, not least because it is less complicated: “The entire intellectual purport of any symbol consists in the total of all

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general modes of rational conduct which, conditionally upon all the possible different circumstances and desires, would ensue upon the acceptance of the symbol” (Peirce 1905b, 5.438: 293).2 It is through a coherent application of this principle that pragmatists set out to clearly define the meaning of a concept. From a historical perspective, Peirce was not a huge success. The maxim should have helped clarify our ideas, but it was the maxim itself that led to great confusion, to the point that even Peirce, given how William James used it, decided to drop the name ‘pragmatism’ and coined the term ‘pragmaticism’, which, as he wrote, “is ugly enough to be safe from kidnappers” (Peirce 1905a, 5.414: 277).3 It was John Dewey, in his paper “What Pragmatism Means by Practical,” who undertook to explain the content of the pragmatic maxim, and it is to this essay that we will primarily refer (cf. Dewey 1916). In general terms, the maxim must be considered as a criterion of meaning. Understood in this sense, the maxim states that the meaning of a concept is determined by all the consequences that result from actions carried out on an object. Take the case of the concept of ‘hardness’ (the same example Peirce used in “How to Make Our Ideas Clear”). Its meaning is not fixed by an abstract definition, as the rationalists claimed. Rather its meaning is given by a set of statements of the form ‘if . . . then . . .’, where the conditional antecedent specifies an action on an object and the consequent sensitive effects that result from it. For example, when we say that an object is hard, we mean that if it is rubbed against a large number of other types of objects, then the first object scratches the others. This does not actually need to be The previous version said this: “Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object” (Peirce 1878, 5.402: 258). Apart from being more complicated, thus formulated, coupled with un unfortunate choice of example, (that of the hardness of a diamond that is destroyed before even being touched), the maxim is easily liable to be considered equivalent to the verification principle of the meaning, later proposed by the neopositivists. This is certainly not the best way to interpret the pragmatic maxim. The meaning of a concept is not determined by sets of observational properties, but from what we have to expect when carrying out operations, even hypothetical ones, on an object. We will return to this point further on. 3 Peirce’s concern is surely comprehensible. He introduced the maxim to eliminate metaphysics and its confusion. James, on the other hand, used the maxim to take a stance in metaphysical debates and in particular, in the debate between spiritualists and materialists. The different way in which the two pragmatists consider the dogma of transubstantiation is emblematic. For Peirce (1878, 5.401: 258), “to talk of something as having all the sensible characters of wine, yet being in reality blood, is senseless jargon.” Peirce narrowed the meaning of ‘practical’ to the sensible effects and consequently believed that “It is foolish for Catholics and Protestants to fancy themselves in disagreement about the elements of the sacrament, if they agree in regard to all their sensible affects, here and hereafter” (ibid., 5.401: 258). While James expanded the meaning of ‘practical’ to include the psychological consequences that follow when one believes in the truth of an idea. This is why he writes that although the immediate sensible characters of bread and wine are not altered, “a tremendous difference has been made, no less a one than this, that we who take the sacrament, now feed upon the very substance of divinity” (James 1907: 47). Given the enormous psychological differences that this involves, the dogma of transubstantiation would pass the test of the pragmatic maxim. 2

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done. It can simply be hypothetical. A diamond continues to be an object with the property of hardness even if it is destroyed before ever being touched. What really matters is, if it had been rubbed against other objects, it would have scratched them.4 Once this has been clarified, the concept of hardness gives us a reliable guide to the action. For the sake of precision, what we have to do is simply shift from the semantic clarification of a concept to the truth-value of an assertion. For example, if I say ‘This is a hard stone’, then I have to expect that with this stone I will be able to scratch other objects. Likewise, if I say ‘This liquid is water,’ then I have to expect that it will boil when it reaches the temperature of 100 degrees at sea level. Peirce emphasises that the belief in the truth of an assertion constitutes habits of conduct, which tells us what we have to do if we are to achieve certain goals (or what effects we should expect if we act in a certain way). It should be obvious that the pragmatic maxim, with this acceptance, is not a theory of truth, but a theory of meaning. In fact, my belief that ‘This is a hard stone,’ has a clear empirical meaning even if it should turn out to be false. We have thus clarified the true scope of the pragmatic maxim. What Dewey adds, in his essay “What Pragmatism Means by Practical”, is a distinction that will have some importance for us. In addition to clearing up the potential confusion in James’s pragmatism, Dewey distinguished between the meaning of an object and the meaning of an idea. As for the former, Dewey (1916: 379) writes that “When [. . .] it is a question of an object, ‘meaning’ signifies its conceptual content or connotation, and ‘practical’ means the future responses which an object requires of us or commits us to.” If we bear in mind the previous reconstruction of the pragmatic maxim, it should be clear what Dewey means. Retrospectively, the statements ‘if . . . then . . .’ explain the properties of a given object (the connotation). For example, if someone asks me what water means, I can explain its conceptual content by saying that if it is drunk it quenches the thirst, if it is put on the stove it boils at 100 degrees at sea level, and so on. Moreover, from the point of view of future responses, the pragmatic maxim tells us what to expect when we act on an object. Following our example, what we should expect if we drink water or put water on to boil. Concerning the meaning of ideas, Dewey (1916: 379) expresses it like this: “what an idea as idea means, is precisely that an object is not given. [. . .] an idea is a draft drawn upon existing things, an intention to act so as to arrange them in a certain way. From which it follows that if the draft is honored, if existences, following upon the actions, rearrange or readjust themselves in the way the idea intends, the idea is true.” Let us consider the term H2O. In the eighteenth century, it was not believed at

4 This is what led Peirce to reformulate the pragmatic maxim. In general, there is a potentially unlimited number of methods to determine the hardness of an object. For example, the diamond “Without being subjected to any considerable pressure, it could be found to be insoluble, very highly refractive, showing under radium rays (and perhaps under ‘dark light’ and X-rays) a peculiar bluish phosphorescence, having as high a specific gravity as realgar or orpiment, and giving off during its combustion less heat than any other form of carbon would have done. From some of these properties hardness is believed to be inseparable. For like it they bespeak the high polemerization of the molecule” (Peirce 1905b, 5.457: 309).

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first that the expression had a meaning, because water was considered as a simple element. It was introduced as a concept to solve certain problems. For example, if small drops of water are poured onto on a scorching hot iron plate, then a highly flammable gas (hydrogen) is produced, something which can be coherently ‘organised’ only if you accept the idea that hydrogen is a component of water. In this case, the pragmatic maxim illustrates how the meaning of an idea (the object) is established at the end of a research study that successfully ‘reorganises’ the experience.5 The relationship between the meaning of an object and the meaning of an idea should be obvious. When the existence of an object is given, at the end of a successful search, the pragmatic maxim explains the properties of the object (its connotation). When exploring new areas of knowledge, an idea has the task of reorganising the experience. If it is successful, the idea is real and the idea corresponds to a genuine referent (the denotation). Later, we will see the relevance of the pragmatic maxim for problems that have been huge headaches for philosophers, such as the reality of much more complex entities than ‘water’, such as electrons or atoms (see Sect. 5.2). Here, I would like to emphasize how, according to pragmatism, the conceptual content can never be separated from the practical activity that derives from it. Language is a form of technology, in the sense that it is instrumental in solving problems. In some contexts, assertions like ‘Water boils at 100 degrees’ or ‘Water is a compound of oxygen and hydrogen’, are a way to retrospectively analyse the properties of water after the research has been successful in organising the experience; in others, the same assertions serve to guide us in anticipating the future when we act on an object that we recognise as water; in others still, they are ideas or conjectures about which we try to understand whether they have a correspondence in reality, for example, when the chemical composition of water was not known. In all cases they are instruments that are used or have been used to organise the experience, in the same way as the appearance of the warning light on a gas detector means that there is a gas leak and it helps to prevent us from accidentally striking a match. As Dewey writes Experience and Nature, language “is no different in kind from the use of natural materials and energies, say fire and tools, to refine, reorder, and shape other natural materials, say ore. In both cases, there are matters which as they stand are unsatisfactory and there are also adequate agencies for dealing with them and connecting them” (Dewey 1925: 61). There is no meaning that is unrelated to the practical activities that have allowed a problem to be solved successfully. At the beginning, I tried to explain the apparent plausibility of a conceptual content independent of moral evaluations using the example of the statement ‘Water boils at 100 degrees.’ It has been said that the truth or falsehood of the statement depends only on the characteristics of nature. Human activity should not have anything to do with the content of the statement.

5 Many philosophers of science have dwelt a great deal on this historical case. Dewey also refers to it in his essays. For a historical reconstruction including the philosophical debate, see Barrotta (2000).

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According to Dewey (1916: 377), we can now affirm that “ideas are essentially intentions (plans and method), and what they, as ideas, ultimately intend is prospective – certain changes in prior existing things.” In other words, we do not understand the meaning of a term simply by contemplating a certain entity (or certain facts) but in acquiring the ability to use it on the basis of the problems we have to deal with. That said, it is still not enough to conquer the citadel. There is still one step to take: to connect the activities that lead to the formulation of concepts of science to the moral sphere. Obviously, it should be said that not all scientific activities have a moral nature. It is sufficient to show that at least some morally relevant activities are related to the formation of the meaning of concepts used in the language of science. I will illustrate this in concepts such as ‘biodiversity’ in conservation biology, ‘welfare’ in economics and ‘climatic sensitivity’ (which will be discussed in the next chapter). Although I do not intend to go into detail again, even the concept of ‘the balance of nature,’ already dealt with, presents both a moral and scientific dimension. I believe that these examples illustrate an unequivocal moral depth in scientific language itself. In many contexts, the scientific community establishes the empirical meaning of a concept for the purpose of addressing, and possibly solving, a problem of a morally relevant nature. The focal point I intend to defend is that, in principle, it is not possible to determine the meaning of the concept independently of this moral point of view, even if, as soon as the meaning of the concept is established, the ethical standpoint is no longer immediately apparent. In the philosophy of science, despite great resistance, this conviction is becoming more and more widespread through the discussion of so-called ‘thick concepts’, that is, concepts that are both descriptive and evaluative. The debate on thick concepts is, to a great extent, independent of pragmatism. The idea emerged in Oxford many years ago and concerned the language of morality, not scientific language. Only recently, thanks above all to a neopragmatist like Putnam, the suspicion arose that they also play an important role in science. In the next section, I will illustrate the way in which the idea of thick concept came about in the context of a total rejection of empiricism in moral philosophy. Although Dewey has always coherently argued against empiricism and factvalue dualism, I have already noticed that the debate on thick terms did not emerge from pragmatism. However, it is useful to refer to this debate, while not losing sight of our purpose, which concerns the language of science. In the next paragraph, I will present a specific philosophical reconstruction of thick concepts, which explains why the descriptive component cannot be separated from the evaluative one. We will see how this reconstruction can easily be reinterpreted along the lines of the pragmatist theory of meaning. In the last two paragraphs, we will see the importance of the discussion for an understanding of scientific language.

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Thick Concepts

The birth of debate on thick concepts (although they were not called ‘thick concepts’) dates back to a seminar organised by Philippa Foot and Iris Murdoch, in the 1950s.6 In this seminar, it was noticed that many terms used in moral language were both descriptive and evaluative. These are concepts such as honest/dishonest, courageous/cowardly, generous/mean, cruel/sensitive, and so on. All these concepts express very simple judgments about a person’s character, but from a philosophical point of view they reveal a complex structure. First, they describe the person’s character, making statements about that person’s usual behaviour. For example, if I describe a person as honest, I am claiming that this is someone who always keeps their word. In addition, by attributing to them the property of honesty, I believe that this person tends to act in a certain way. For example, if the person is honest, I would certainly not expect them to steal money from their place of work. However, at the same time, with the term ‘honest’ I am also making an evaluation of the person’s character. In the case in question, it is clearly a positive evaluation. In fact, if we judge a person to be honest, then by definition this means that we consider them worthy of our trust, a person to whom we will gladly entrust delicate and important jobs. The central idea of Philippa Foot and Iris Murdoch’s seminar was not only that these terms were ambivalent, since they were both descriptive and evaluative in nature, but also that the two components could not conceptually be separated. In other words, when we say that a person is honest, we are describing and evaluating their character at the same time, without being able to distinguish the descriptive component from the evaluative one. If Foot and Murdoch are right, there is a strong argument against the dualism between facts and values, a conclusion that is in conflict with one of the central points of empiricism. The way empiricists come to defend the dualism between facts and values is easily understandable. For empiricists, only in the field of science can we talk about true or false beliefs, while in ethics value judgements are neither true nor false. In fact, we have only two types of real propositions: analytical ones (whose truth-value can be verified by the principle of non-contradiction) and factual ones (the truth of which can be verified through experience). This is the famous ‘Hume’s fork’7 which, when combined with the equally famous Hume’s ‘law,’ leaves the truth-value of moral judgements undetermined. 6

See Williams (1985: 217–8 fn. 7). It turns out that the polemic goal of the seminar was not directly empiricism, but Hare’s prescriptivism. Foot and Murdoch developed their ideas on thick terms in various works. For example, see Foot (1958 and 1958–1959), and Murdoch (1970). In this part I will focus analytically on Foot’s 1958 essay. 7 See Hume’s equally famous passage (1964: 20–4): “All the objects of human reason or inquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas, and Matters of Fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of Geometry, Algebra, and Arithmetic [. . .]. Propositions of this kind are discoverable by the mere operation of thought [. . .]. Matters of fact, which are the second objects of human reason, are not ascertained in the same manner; nor is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the foregoing.”

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In his acclaimed book – Language, Truth, and Logic – that marked the introduction of logical empiricism to Great Britain, Alfred Ayer (1946: 108) states that “sentences which simply express moral judgments do not say anything. They are pure expressions of feeling and as such do not come under the category of truth and falsehood.” Bertrand Russell also ended up accepting the sceptical conclusion of Ayer and of empiricism. The book Religion and Science devotes a whole chapter to the relationship between science and ethics, and here, for example, we read that “when we assert that this or that has ‘value’, we are giving expression to our own emotions, not to a fact which would still be true if our personal feelings were different” (Russell 1935: 230–1). Therefore, according to empiricism, when we use one of the above-mentioned thick concepts, we should be able to separate the descriptive component from the evaluative one. The former asserts that the character of the person shows that he possesses some empirically verifiable properties, while the latter adds to the first our feeling of approval or disapproval towards that trait of character. To return to our example, when we say ‘John is honest,’ for empiricism we support two judgements. In the first place, we claim that the proposition ‘John possesses the characteristics a, b, c, d’ is true; secondly, we add to the proposition our moral judgement, which consists of the feeling of approval aroused by the empirically verified properties. To put it another, slightly different way, for each thick concept we should obtain one that has the same descriptive features while not having any power of an evaluative nature that would be added at a later time. In their famous seminar, Philippa Foot and Iris Murdoch suggested that such separation is not possible. From a historical point of view, the Foot and Murdoch seminar had a profound influence.8 Bernard Williams also participated in the seminar and it was he who introduced the term ‘thick’. Although the initial idea belongs to Foot and Murdoch, in a certain sense, it was Williams’s analysis that provided the starting point for the next debate. This is how Williams (1985: 140–1) characterises thick concepts: They are characteristically related to reasons for action. If a concept of this kind applies, this often provides someone with reasons for action, though that reason need not be a decisive one [. . .]. We may say, summarily, that such concepts are ‘action-guiding’. At the same time, their application is guided by the world. A concept of this sort may rightly or wrongly applied, and people who have acquired it can agree that it applies or fails to apply to some new situation.

Throughout literature, thick concepts are now characterised in the way Williams suggested: they are action-guiding terms in that they are evaluative and world guided because they apply to factual descriptions. These are concepts that are distinct both from purely descriptive concepts (such as the colour ‘grey’) and from ‘thin’ ethical concepts (such as ‘just’ or ‘good’) where only the evaluative component is present. It is interesting to note that in Williams’s essay, in fact, we do not actually explicitly find an explanation of the concept of a ‘thin’ ethical concept, but all of

8 Later, I will deal exclusively with Foot’s position which is much more analytical than Murdoch’s (without wishing to take anything away from her literary and philosophical merits).

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his discussion suggests that for Williams there is a qualitative distinction between the ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ ethical concepts: the first are both action-guiding and worldguided, while the second are only action-guiding, providing the more general evaluations that form the premise of how we intend to act in the world. The qualitative distinction between ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ ethical concepts supports the profound scepticism that Williams harboured towards ethical theory. For Williams, thick concepts provide genuine knowledge of the moral world because they have a truth-value (for example, knowing that a certain individual has stolen, I can without doubt assert that the proposition ‘That individual is honest’ is false). Ethical theory has traditionally ignored these concepts and has focused on thin concepts such as ‘justice’ and ‘good’, which not only do they not provide knowledge, but rather on reflection tend to undermine the morals embedded in thick concepts. As he writes: If we accept that there can be knowledge at the hypertraditional or unreflective level; if we accept the obvious truth that reflection characteristically disturbs, unseats, or replaces those traditional concepts; and if we agree that, at least as things are, the reflective level is not in a position to give us knowledge we did not have before - then we reach the notably un-Socratic conclusion that, in ethics, reflection can destroy knowledge (1985: 148).

Pragmatism accepts the attack on the dualism between facts and values. However, it rejects Williams’s scepticism about ethical theory, and in fact here we find the first reason to reject scepticism: there is no reason to believe there is a qualitative distinction between thick and thin ethical terms. This point was immediately underlined by Samuel Scheffler (1987: 417–8): The contrast between thick and thin ethical concepts has been taken for granted [. . .], but the distinction is not in fact a clear one. Consider the following concepts, for example: justice, fairness, and impartiality, to take one cluster of notion; liberty, equality, freedom of expression, to take another; privacy, self-respect, envy, to take a third; needs, well-being, and interests, to take a fourth; and rights, autonomy, and consent, for a fifth: Are the concepts on this list thick or thin? [. . .] In fact, [. . .] it is impossible confidently to classify various of the concepts on the list as either thick or thin. [. . .] And what these considerations suggest to me is that any division of ethical concepts into the two categories of the thick and the thin is itself a considerable oversimplification.

What we should say is that moral language passes gradually from thick concepts to thinner ones. It has been suggested that thin concepts are obtained by abstraction from thick concepts, which surely belong to an area that is closer to everyday life. That is why Williams associates thin concepts with philosophical reflection. This suggestion is possibly correct, but the point is that Williams’s analysis does not guarantee a qualitative distinction between thick and thin ethical concepts. Further on (see Sect. 5.1), we will see why, for pragmatism, and especially for Dewey’s pragmatism, all moral evaluations fall within cognitive investigation that defines empirical and scientific methods. For the time being, we still need to clarify the reasons why thick concepts cannot be divided into a corresponding descriptive concept that is accompanied by a moral sentiment of approval or blame. In other words, we must provide a more precise

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reconstruction of thick concepts. Williams introduced the terminology and cleverly used the term to defend his particular position in ethics, but we cannot find a detailed explanation in his writings as to why the ‘separationist’ strategy, typical of empiricism, may be considered unsatisfactory.

2.3

Thick Concepts and the Flexibility of Moral Language

In moral philosophy, no unanimous consensus has been reached on the nature of thick concepts. It is certainly not a surprising situation since it is rarely the case that unanimous consensus is reached in philosophy. Alongside those we can call the ‘non-separationists,’ there are philosophers who believe that it is possible to separate the descriptive content from the evaluative one.9 Following the debate, it is likely that today there is a majority of non-separationists, but it would be rash to draw the conclusion that this is a decisive point in favour of their theory, although there is no doubt that the much-heated debate showed how Philippa Foot and Iris Murdoch’s initial idea is still strongly plausible. At least it has been shown that the separation between facts and values is not to be found in the world, as we know it, because such a separation is more the result of a somewhat rather abstract philosophical position. Dewey would certainly have argued that separationists commit yet another version of what he termed the philosophical fallacy, which consists of surreptitiously transforming into existential antecedents those that are actually the conclusion of a philosophical inquiry.10 Even though Williams certainly cannot be considered a pragmatist, Dewey would have undoubtedly endorsed his claim: “fact-value theorists who rely on linguistic means are bringing their distinction to language rather than finding it there” (Williams 1985: 130). Foot and Murdoch’s thesis is therefore endowed with a certain persuasive force. However, I believe there is another reason that explains the interest it generated. It is likely that many scholars saw this idea as a conceptually useful tool that can raise intellectually stimulating issues. This is particularly true for the purposes of this essay since, through the pragmatic maxim, I intend to show how the non-separationist thesis has interesting consequences also for the philosophy of science. Among the main ‘separationists’, Simon Blackburn must be counted. See, for example, Blackburn (1981, 1992 and 2013). Blackburn (1981) is of particular interest, at least from my point of view, where Blackburn responds to McDowell’s theories, which we will refer to later. For an overview of the debate, see Kirchin (2013). As is often the case in analytical philosophy, an initially simple idea has become the subject of analysis becoming increasingly more technical. For my purposes, which concern the application of the thick notions to scientific measurements, the level of technicality can be kept at rather simple levels. For a technical analysis see Väyrynen (2013), who proposes a critical theory on the philosophical relevance of thick terms. Regardless of this theory, I believe that Väyrynen’s book has the value of offering the most detailed discussion of ‘thick concepts,’ at least as far as I know. 10 See, for example, Dewey (1925: 34), where he warns “from conversion of eventual functions into antecedent existence.” 9

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The above-mentioned purpose allows me to avoid following in any detailed way the very broad debate that thick terms have raised in moral philosophy. I will, in fact, limit myself to presenting a specific proposal, that of John McDowell, which, in addition to being widely appreciated in moral philosophy, also shows the advantage it has of being able to be extended to scientific research, thanks to its redefinition in the context of the pragmatic maxim. However, to understand its merits, we must take a step back and look at the way Philippa Foot initially proposed the supposition that thick terms form an indissoluble amalgam of descriptive and evaluative components. Initially, Foot observes how the separationist theories fail to explain how moral terms are used. Separationism implies that any description can be associated with any sentiment of approval or blame. However, it seems counter-intuitive to attribute such extreme flexibility to moral sentiments. There must be limits. For example, it would be meaningless to blame or approve a man “walking slowly up to an English front door” (Foot 1958: 103) or, even more so, express blame or approval when we notice that he moves his eyelids. Yet, it seems that the separationist strategies lead us to these absurdities. We have actually seen that for separationists moral evaluations are thought to consist of describing a state of things to which the sentiment of approval or blame is added. I am not sure of the strength of this argument. It likely has a certain degree of strength against an emotivist like Ayer (1946: 107, italics added), whereby he writes: “if I say to someone, ‘You acted wrongly in stealing that money,’ I am not stating anything more than if I had simply said ‘You stole that money.’ In adding that this action is wrong, I am not making any further statement about it. I am simply evincing my moral disapproval of it.” However, Hume argued that naturalistic investigation is needed to ascertain why certain states of fact cause the emergence of specific moral sentiments. In this case, we are not dealing with a mere addition, but a causal relationship that should be carefully studied. One could also point out that Ayer’s emotivism does not preclude such investigations, even though he relegates them to science, probably to either psychology or sociology. However, we must admit that Foot has raised a legitimate problem. Aside from any ethical theory we would like to support, this cannot consider moral evaluations and descriptive statements as simply joined. Moral language does not manifest this extreme flexibility; however, by denying extreme flexibility, Foot ends up defending the equally unsustainable antipode of the thesis: that of extreme inflexibility with which the evaluations are joined to the descriptions. Briefly, let us examine the reasons that led Foot to a theory that seems too radical. The example chosen by Philippa Foot is the word ‘rude’. It is perhaps not the best example because, as she herself pointed out, it can be confused with simple rules of etiquette. Foot (1958: 102) emphasises how the concept “expresses disapproval, is meant to be used when action is to be discouraged, [...] and so on.” Later on, she notices that the concept “can only be used where certain descriptions apply” (ibid.). In this regard, she suggests that the appropriate description of ‘rude’ is that of behaviour that “causes offence” (ibid.). Therefore, according to these observations, the term ‘rude’ is a thick term with a descriptive component (behaviour that causes offence), to which is added the evaluative component of blame.

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To clarify Foot’s argument, let us remind ourselves of the conception she intends to criticise. The separationist argument that states that ‘x is rude’ has two components which are conceptually independent: a descriptive one and an evaluative one. Foot tries to show that this separation is not possible because there is a conceptual or logical implication between the components. Let us focus on the following two implications: 1]. ‘x is a form of behaviour that offends’ implies that ‘x is rude’, and 2]. ‘x is rude’ implies that ‘x is morally reprehensible behaviour’. Foot claims that it is impossible for any person to state that x is offensive behaviour without asserting at the same time that x constitutes rude behaviour (implication 1). This is her argument: we may ask what the relation is between the assertion that these conditions of offence are fulfilled – let us call it O – and the statement that a piece of behaviour is rude – let us call it R. Can someone who accepts the proposition O (that this kind of offence is caused) deny the proposition R (that the behaviour is rude)? I should have thought that this was just what he could not do, for if he says that is not rude, we shall stare, and ask him what sort of behaviour would be rude; [. . .] whether a man is speaking of behaviour as rude or not rude, he must use the same criteria as anyone else, and that since the criteria are satisfied if O is true, it is impossible for him to assert O while denying R. It follows that if it is a sufficient condition of P’s entailing Q that the assertion of P is inconsistent with the denial of Q, we have here an example of a non-evaluative premise from which an evaluative conclusion can be deduced. (Foot 1958: 103–4)

Therefore, according to Foot, to deny the evaluative conclusion and to accept the descriptive premise simply means not understanding the meaning of being rude. In fact, it is the correct use of the meaning that the descriptive premise must logically imply a conclusion of an evaluative nature. Foot’s example gives some plausibility to her analysis. However, we can see in the passage above that Foot focuses on the first implication (1] ‘x is behaviour that causes offence’ implies that ‘x is rude’), without even mentioning the second implication (2] ‘x is rude’ implies ‘x is morally objectionable behaviour’). She most likely thought that there was no point in giving consideration to the second implication. Indeed, for very good reasons, Foot assumed that rudeness is a concept that necessarily entails our ‘disapproval,’ something that must be discouraged. However, moral language is not as coherent as the ‘rude’ example (perhaps) suggests. Some thick terms are used with a wide margin of flexibility. Take the case of ‘lewd’, an example I have taken from Gibbard (1992).11 Many people, including Gibbard, do not approve of the vaguely puritanical meaning of the concept. It is, therefore, a thick concept whose descriptive component means, say, ‘ostentatious sexual behaviour,’ while the evaluative component remains undetermined because it depends on the feelings of individuals or groups of individuals. A Puritan community would have no doubt in concluding that openly sexual behaviour is morally disgraceful, while a more ‘libertine’ community would be indifferent to such behaviour. 11

As defined in the literature, this is the problem of objectionable thick concepts.

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In these cases, the descriptive component ‘x is an ostentatious sexual behaviour’ does not imply that ‘x is reprehensible’ since the acceptance of the premise and rejection of the conclusion does not necessarily mean that Gibbard, and those who think along the same lines, do not correctly understand the meaning of the thick concept. There must be something wrong with Foot’s analysis. If we look at the issue more closely we can see where the problem lies. We have seen that the Foot analysis does not really have one but two implications. In the case proposed by Gibbard: 1]. ‘x is ostentatiously sexual behaviour’ implies that ‘x is lewd’, and 2]. ‘x is lewd’ implies that ‘x is morally reprehensible’. Gibbard’s example demonstrates that at least one of the two implications is wrong. We will consider both possibilities. If we say that it is the second implication that is wrong, then we could at least say that ‘x is ostentatiously sexual behaviour’ implies that ‘x is lewd’. However, this would mean that only the descriptive component is able to establish the meaning of the thick term, to which an evaluative feeling is added (for some negative, for others of indifference). This is precisely what the separationists claim. The former option is certainly the most consistent with their philosophical position: hence, the success of the separationist strategy seems to be complete. Nevertheless, we could still say that it is the first implication that is incorrect. However, in this case too, Foot’s analysis would prove inadequate. In fact, we could no longer say, as Foot would have, that the description is sufficient for the correct use of the thick term. In this case, everyone would agree that what is lewd is also reprehensible, but they would certainly not agree as to the circumstances in which the concept of lewdness should be applied. We might suppose that there are some paradigmatic descriptions of lewdness that necessarily involve the feeling of condemnation, even though it is uncertain what they are and if they even exist. In any case, the flexibility of moral language shows that Foot’s analysis is inadequate. Can we somehow improve on it? Despite its inadequacy, I believe Foot’s initial intuition is right. Her analysis just needs to be modified by elaborating on the explanation of the entailment relationship between descriptions and evaluations. This can be done thanks to McDowell’s standpoint. Let us consider a morally cohesive community in which a system of widespread and deeply-rooted beliefs establishes the meaning of a thick ethical term. In other words, in a fairly precise manner, the ethical concept of the community guides its members as to the circumstances in which the thick ethical term must be applied. The problem that arises is whether an external observer, let us say an anthropologist, is able to understand the descriptive component of the thick term without having an evaluative point of view. McDowell gives the following answer. The passage is rather long, but it deserves to be reported in full: Consider, for instance, a specific conception of some moral virtue: the conception current in a reasonably cohesive moral community. If the disentangling manoeuvre is always possible, that implies that the extension of the associated term, as it would be used by someone who belonged to the community, could be mastered independently of the special concerns which,

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in the community, would show themselves in admiration or emulation of actions seen as falling under the concept. That is: one could know which actions the term would be applied to, so that one would be able to predict applications and withholdings of it in new cases – not merely without oneself sharing the community’s admiration (there need be no difficulty about that), but without even embarking on an attempt to make sense of their admiration. That would be an attempt to comprehend their special perspective; whereas, according to the position I am considering, the genuine feature to which the term is applied should be graspable without benefit of understanding the special perspective, since sensitivity to it is singled out as an independent ingredient in a purported explanation of why occupants of the perspective see things as they do. But is it at all plausible that this singling out can always be brought off? (McDowell 1981: 144)

Consequently, the external observer may or may not share the moral feeling that accompanies the thick term. Following McDowell’s mental experiment, this is banally true. However, the interesting point is that the possibility of discordant moral evaluations does not help the separationists, unlike what happens following Foot’s analysis. According to the picture painted by McDowell, separationists should argue something more than the mere possibility of moral disagreement. For separationists, the meaning of a thick concept (its extension, i.e. in which circumstances it is applied correctly) needs to be understood without even adopting, at least in the imagination, the moral point of view of the community studied, which is to say, the ethical conception that tells us when the moral term is to be applied. And this does not seem possible because the ethical conception is necessary for the external observer to understand in what circumstances the term is applied correctly. In order to determine the ideas, Foot’s proposal states, as we have seen, that ‘x is behaviour that causes offence’ logically implies a negative moral judgement ‘x is rude’ (Foot takes the second implication for granted, which goes from ‘x is rude’ to ‘x is reprehensible’). Following McDowell, we should say that the community has a conception by which the belief in the description ‘x is an offence’ logically implies belief in the negative moral evaluation ‘x is rude.’ This does not require the external observer to adhere to the community’s ethical conception. Instead, the point is that without adopting – at least provisionally, in the imagination – the ethical conception of the community, the external observer would not be able to predict what behaviour would be described as offensive and consequently would not be able to correctly apply the evaluation ‘x is rude’. The same must be said for the thick term ‘lewdness.’ Let us completely drop the radical hypothesis of the anthropologist who, in all probability, speaks a natural language that is different from the one used by the community in question. In the case of ‘lewdness,’ the external observer is someone, like Gibbard, who observes the community of those who have a ‘vaguely puritanical’ ethical conception. However, also in this case, the external observer must identify themselves with the belief system of the community. Otherwise, without this identification, they could not understand to what descriptive circumstances the ‘vaguely puritan’ community would apply the term ‘lewd.’ According to Philippa Foot, separationism requires excessive flexibility of our moral evaluations. She is right in believing that such flexibility is implausible, but her theory ends up demanding the opposite: the extreme rigidity of moral

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evaluations. The correct position is that of relative flexibility, i.e. relative to the community under examination. At the end of this discussion, the reader could understandably question the relevance of this for scientific research. This curiosity can be satisfied by reinterpreting McDowell’s idea along the lines of pragmatism and the pragmatic maxim. This reinterpretation may seem a very long stretch, but it is not at all.12 Taking the pragmatist angle, the moral perspective – which one must relate to, at least in the imagination, in order to understand the meaning of a concept – must be identified with the perspective stimulated by a practical, morally relevant problem which scientists refer to so as to establish the meaning of concepts such as biodiversity, welfare or climate sensitivity. In Dewey’s terminology, these are ideas intended as “a draft drawn upon existing things, an intention to act so as to arrange them in a certain way” (Dewey 1916: 379). Specific aspects of the experience are systematised in order to effectively solve the practical problem. If the intention is successful, if at the end of the research the idea succeeds in effectively ‘reorganising’ the experience, then a denotation corresponds to the idea, something that can be measured for scientific purposes. This is one of the reasons why, as we have previously stated, for pragmatism, language resembles a technological tool. In the next section, some examples will clarify the exact extent of these affirmations.

2.4

Thick Concept and Scientific Measurements

Are there concepts in scientific language that we can define as ‘thick’? Obvious candidates are cognitive values – such as ‘simplicity’ or ‘predictive capacity’ – which we will address in the next section. Here we will deal more specifically with moral values, which are central to our research. The question we must ask ourselves is whether in the language of science there are descriptive terms that are clearly associated with moral evaluations. As already mentioned, we will address the issue particularly from the point of view of the philosophy of pragmatism, which is the philosophical approach that has priority here. However, it is worth emphasising how the entanglement between facts and values in research lends itself to be studied also from philosophical perspectives

12

It would be interesting to explore the philosophical background shared, though only indirectly, by Dewey and McDowell in the essay in question. McDowell refers to Wittgenstein’s opinion, not to Dewey’s. However, some close similarities between the conceptions of the language supported by Wittgenstein and Dewey have been noted. I cannot address this issue here, but the reader could, for example, consult Hickman’s book (1990: 57–9). On the similarities (and differences) between Wittgenstein’s view and pragmatism, the two main contemporary neopragmatists Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam have also reflected. For Rorty, see Rorty (1961), especially Section III, and obviously Rorty (1982), in particular, chapter 2. For Putnam, see Putnam (1992), especially chapter 2. I believe that Crocker’s paper (1998) is of particular interest.

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that are far from pragmatism. Although, for reasons that we will shortly see, pragmatism can clarify an important aspect of scientific research related to the existence of thick concepts, we should resist the temptation to think unilaterally on a topic that is as fascinating as it is complex. In reality the interplay between facts and values opens up an epistemological investigation that is ethically aware. Pragmatism is the approach I prefer, but it is not the only way to improve our understanding of the interaction between science and morality. I would like to stress this point because the ways in which science and morals are able to interpenetrate is surprising for anyone who is accustomed to reasoning in terms of empiricism. Philippa Foot’s ethical naturalism offers interesting insights into the interweaving between science and morality.13 The presence of thick concepts in scientific language should therefore encourage philosophers of science to carry out field research that may enlighten their role in specific scientific areas. Here I will focus on a specific issue, closely linked to pragmatism: the nature of some scientific measurements. I will illustrate it through welfare economics and biodiversity research (the concept of climate sensitivity will be discussed in the next chapter because it mainly relates to another argument in favour of the moral relevance of scientific language). In these cases, there are practical problems, the solution to which involves accepting, even only provisionally, a moral point of view to decide which aspects of reality have to be measured, because they are relevant to the resolution of the problem. I must again stress that here I am not suggesting that for the philosophy of science the significance of thick terms is reduced to certain types of measurement. However, I think it is advisable to focus on them for at least three reasons. First of all, to the best of my knowledge, the connection between measurements and thick concepts has not been sufficiently noted. Secondly, with measurements we are able to closely examine a fundamental component of scientific research that should help us transcend the wrong impression that discussions in moral philosophy are only vaguely connected to science. Finally, the scientific measurements of welfare economics and biodiversity are closely linked to policies aimed at solving practical problems such as safeguarding nature and enhancing the well-being of citizens. This is an excellent way to introduce the pragmatic dimension of scientific research, although the relevance of pragmatism is certainly not reduced to just studying the formulation of policies. Through the pragmatist maxim, we have already seen how, as far as pragmatism is concerned, ‘practical’ means something far more general. Orthodox welfare economics - or ‘neoclassical’ – is very careful to play down value judgements. The belief that values cannot be discussed rationally is implicit.

13

Philippa Foot’s ethical naturalism is interestingly reflected in, though unknowingly, Lovelock’s Gaia theory, which sees the Earth as a biogeochemical system with a highly integrated hierarchical structure capable of self-preservation and self-regulation. I analysed the interplay of facts and values in Lovelock’s theory in Barrotta (2011). However, I would like to point out here that this entanglement is completely independent of the fantastic theory that the Earth is a living being, an interpretation which, incidentally, was rejected by one of its most prominent supporters, the biologist Lynn Margulis, famous for her studies on eukaryotic cells.

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With this conviction, it is not surprising that neoclassical economics has tried to make value assumptions as weak as possible, so weak as to hope that no one can reasonably question them. However, this has also condemned welfare economics to irrelevance. All evaluations are reduced to the concept of the ‘Pareto improvement,’ whereby a new distribution of wealth benefits at least one person without making anyone worse off. This is such a restrictive criterion that it cannot find any practical application. Various attempts have been made to address the rigidity of the concept of Paretian improvement without forfeiting the premise that value assumptions should be reduced to the absolute minimum. It is only with the economics of Amartya Sen that moral values have legitimately become part of economic analysis. Sen’s greatest merit is probably that of introducing moral values to the analytical apparatus of economics, thus reducing the traditional mistrust of economists of everything that appeared to them as a mere subjective preference which they could not argue rationally about (and that was therefore accepted as a simple fact from which to begin the economic analysis). In Sen’s welfare economics, concepts are introduced which, as Putnam noted (2002, Chapter 2), have the characteristic of being ‘thick.’ Sen is thinking about the situation of third world or developing countries in particular, where it cannot be assumed that the absence of constraints on individual action is equivalent to the freedom to choose your own life plan, i.e. to become the person you would like to be. The concepts of functionings and capability have the precise purpose of measuring actual welfare in countries where individuals do not have many opportunities to choose. ‘Functionings’ are the results achieved by a person, represented by elementary acquisitions, such as being fed, up to far more complex acquisitions, such as the level of education. Capabilities, on the other hand, are “the various combinations of functionings (beings and doings) that the person can achieve” (Sen 1992: 40). Concern with safeguarding freedom in its positive sense is explicit in Sen, meaning the set of opportunities that individuals have at their disposal. Therefore, to affirm that a country like India has a certain index of well-being measured in terms of capabilities, means providing a factual measurement and, at the same time, evaluating the situation in India. Here we have to be careful about the origin of the ratings. It is not simply a matter of saying that situations with a greater number of capabilities are morally preferable. This would be trivial. After all, this is the objective of any measure of well-being. The main point is that evaluations are already generated when the meaning of ‘capability’ is established. The concept of ‘happiness’ as indicator of well-being leads us to different measurements. Both measurements are objective, in the sense that the facts must be carefully and thoroughly collected. However, they focus on different aspects of reality, as they use different terms when selecting what is relevant to the measurement. The moral point of view is relevant here precisely because in establishing the meaning of the terms, the aspects of the reality of empirical research are chosen.

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It is useful to further explore the comparison between the economics of happiness, a relatively recent approach to welfare economics,14 and Sen’s welfare economics. The economics of happiness is based on questionnaires that measure how satisfied people are with life. Even with the recent acquisitions of psychology and neurophysiology, economists have developed ingenious methods to find out whether the data collected by the questionnaires accurately reflects the psychological state of the individuals interviewed (there is a multitude of factors that can lead to bias in the responses). Sen’s objections to this approach are not, however, methodological. He fears that a person subjected to strong deprivations coupled with social conditioning can correctly report a high degree of happiness, despite living in conditions that would normally be considered as unacceptable. As he writes: “Consider a very deprived person who is poor, exploited, overworked and ill, but who has been satisfied with his lot by social conditioning [. . .]. Can we possibly believe that he is doing well just because he is happy and satisfied?” (Sen 1985: 8). Note that Sen does not deny that the measurements of happiness are not important. On the contrary, he wants to point out that they may be appropriate in certain contexts or, better, he denies exclusivity because the measurements are reliable only where one can presume that individuals have sufficient autonomy to critically evaluate their prospects of life (whether the conditions of autonomy are fulfilled in economically developed societies is another matter that is not directly relevant in this context). It should now be clear how terms like ‘capabilities‘and ‘happiness’ (in the sense of ‘declared satisfaction with life’) are both moral and descriptive at the same time. The moral point of view, it must be emphasised, does not preclude stringent factual measurements. In both approaches there are statistical studies and data collections that objectively measure well-being once the meaning of the relevant terms has been established. The moral factor is not independent, nor does it skew data collection. Instead, it would be better to say that it offers the perspective needed to decide which aspects of reality are to be measured with a view to formulating the appropriate policies. The point debated here could be clarified using a rather simple example, instead of resorting to elaborate economic theories. Take the word ‘poverty’ (cf. Mongin 2006). An economist could reasonably argue that ‘people do not live in a state of poverty when they are well-fed and have access to education and basic levels of healthcare’. Another economist might say that ‘people are poor when they can satisfy nothing more than their basic needs, such as being well-fed and having access to education and basic levels of healthcare’. The two economists argue different factual measurements on poverty, which are based on different meanings of the word ‘poverty’. The term ‘poverty’ is not ambiguous (each economist can state it with the degree of precision he wishes). Rather, we should say that the term is

14

For an evaluation of the economics of happiness, I would refer you to Barrotta (2008). Here I have greatly simplified the debate on the economics of happiness.

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both evaluative and descriptive and that the two economists offer two different descriptive meanings of the term because they have two different evaluations. Economics is full of thick terms (another example is given by ‘involuntary unemployment’). It could, however, be argued that it is only a specific discipline and may therefore be an isolated case. However, it would not be a correct objection. We can find thick terms also in ecology and biology. I will only focus here on the term ‘biodiversity‘. In this case too, there are several aspects of reality that, when given priority, give rise to different measurements. In the next chapter I will also examine the concept of ‘climate sensitivity,’ widely used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Its different location in this body of work is due to the fact that it is mainly related to another important argument, viz. inductive risk, which shows the complex relationship between moral evaluations and scientific language from a different perspective. Biological reality shows remarkable variety. Even two individuals of the same species, unless they are clones, are generally very different in character. Ernst Mayr (1997: 124) makes this statement: “The most impressive aspect of the living world is its diversity. No two individuals in sexually reproducing populations are the same, nor are any two populations, species, or higher taxa. Wherever one looks in nature, one finds uniqueness.” This means that trying to protect any type of biodiversity would involve protecting the whole biological reality. Consequently, the very concept of biodiversity would not provide any basis for intervention in conservation biology. As E. O. Wilson (2001) noted in his book on biodiversity, it would seem necessary to reliably identify an ‘atomic unit’ as a starting point to describe biodiversity. Without this ‘unit’, any measurement would be arbitrary. He writes: “Since antiquity, biologists have felt a compelling need to posit an atomic unity by which diversity can be broken apart, then described, measured, and reassembled. [. . .] Not to have a natural unit [. . .] would be to abandon a large part of biology into free fall” (Wilson 2001: 35–6). To get around the problem, convention has it that conservation biology measures biodiversity by focusing on three aspects of reality: genetic characteristics, species and ecosystems. Unless there is evidence that all biological characteristics can be reduced to genetics, there is room for different and incompatible biodiversity measures. For the sake of discussion, it is agreed that there are good reasons to select the species as a unit of measurement of biodiversity. In this case, we should for instance say that the existence of eight species indicates greater biodiversity than the existence of four species. However, even accepting the species as an ‘atomic unit’ to measure biodiversity, it is common knowledge among biologists that there is no unanimous definition of species.15 For example, according to the biological concept of species, two individuals belong to the same species if they are able to mate and generate fertile individuals. Another definition identifies species as individuals who share the same phylogenetic history. These two definitions have the advantage of having a specific operational significance, leading to a precise measurement. The

15

For an overview of the problems, including philosophical ones, concerning the definition of species in relation to conservation biology, see the book by Maclaurin and Sterelny (2008).

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problem arises from the fact that they do not lead to the same measurements. The definition based on phylogenetic history greatly overestimates biodiversity with respect to biological definition (cf. Agapow et al. 2004). And, that is not all. Again, for the sake of discussion, let us adopt the biological definition of species. Even if it is not free of problems (as is demonstrated by the existence of asexual organisms), it is certainly the most intuitive and most widely accepted. However, these concessions do not protect us from potentially counterintuitive results. It is in fact fairly common that populations of the same species (so defined) exhibit very different behaviours. Sahotra Sarkar (2005: 180–1) makes the example, among many others, of the Danaus Plexippus, a species of butterfly derived from both migratory (from North America to Mexico or California) and non-migratory populations (in the Tropics). If we adopted the criterion of the number of species to measure biodiversity, the extinction of migratory populations (a real threat) would have no impact on biodiversity, even though it would mean the disappearance of populations of great naturalistic interest. Considerations of this type have led to some scepticism about the existence of an ‘atomic unit’ with which to measure biodiversity (cf. Minelli 1993). This does not mean that biodiversity measurements are arbitrary. The lesson we have to learn from this is another. When we come up against statements like ‘biodiversity is decreasing,’ or other such assertions, we should not think of propositions that merely express factual data. These do not reflect an ‘atomic unit’ undergoing the measurement. Instead, such propositions are conceptual tools that are prerequisite for the resolution of a conservation biology problem. Only after we have stated the goal we intend to reach (i.e. what aspect of reality we want to preserve in the given circumstances, in the light of our values) does it make sense to talk about a measurement of biodiversity. In this respect, studies on conservation biology are definitely objective and by no means arbitrary. The debate on ‘thick concepts’, as we have seen, emerged independently of the philosophy of pragmatism and it is therefore interesting that their analysis brings us back to the traditional themes of pragmatism. It is in fact in the nature of pragmatism to reject the idea that the meaning only includes the term and the designated object. What also has to be taken into consideration is the use that is made of that term. In other words, we do not understand the meaning of a term by contemplating a certain entity (or certain phenomena), but by acquiring the ability to apply it in a manner which is appropriate to the problems we have to deal with. Ultimately, this is the essence of the pragmatic maxim of meaning, already discussed above and I have shown, I believe, its importance in explaining how moral evaluations penetrate the same content of scientific theories. When we measure the biodiversity of an ecological system or the welfare of a country, we do not simply express a value judgement or a mere description of a fact. We inevitably do both.

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Cognitive Values and Moral Values

At the end of this chapter, I cannot avoid referring, albeit briefly, to cognitive or epistemic values, a subject that has attracted the attention of philosophers of science for many years. They are defined as cognitive (or epistemic) because they are concepts – such as ‘empirical accuracy’ or ‘heuristic fruitfulness’ – which seem to be good indicators of the truth of a theory. Although as such they do not have a practical or moral connotation, they too are ‘thick’ concepts because they describe and at the same time evaluate theory (i.e. the claim that the theory is true or a good approximation of the truth). Today, almost no one refutes the use of cognitive values in science, while there is strong resistance to accepting a similar role of moral values in science, although this resistance appears to be more the result of empiricist prejudice. In all probability, it was a paper by Thomas Kuhn that was the spark, triggering a very wide-ranging, and at times heated, debate on the role of cognitive values in scientific research. Having been accused of giving in to irrationalism in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn tried to show how the deepest meaning of his philosophical conception was not that of accepting irrationalism and the psychology of the masses, but was a model of rationality different from the one inherited from logical empiricism and the Popperian methodology. For Kuhn, the role of cognitive values must be understood in this context. In The Structure, Kuhn undoubtedly uses expressions that strongly suggest that the choice between alternative theories is a subjective one. The most striking case is illustrated by the term ‘conversion’, which immediately makes the reader think of religious conversion: “The transfer of allegiance from paradigm to paradigm is a conversion experience that cannot be forced” (Kuhn 1970: 151). On the other hand, a more careful reading of the book reveals that the ‘conversion’ that Kuhn speaks of is not an irrational act, but something very different, which calls into play reasoning: “We must therefore ask how conversion is induced and how resisted. [. . .] just because it is asked about techniques of persuasion, or about argument and counterargument in a situation in which there can be no proof, our question is a new one, demanding a sort of study that has not previously been undertaken” (1970: 152).16 From extracts like these, it seems obvious that the term ‘conversion’ was just a rhetorically unfortunate choice. In his essay “Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice” Kuhn explains the nature of cognitive values and their role in the rationality of theoretical choice (cf. Kuhn 1977, chapter xiii). The values Kuhn refers to are empirical accuracy, inter-theoretic consistency, broad scope (the observational consequences of a theory should extend beyond the initial observations for which the theoretical explanation had been designed), simplicity and heuristic fruitfulness. This is not an exhaustive list. Kuhn introduces these five values based on his vast – and certainly authoritative – historical research. 16

Pera (1994: 8 ff.) has well documented the double register in Kuhn’s book, open to irrationalist interpretations as well as those that document the search for different forms of rationality.

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Cognitive values allow Kuhn to slide in between the rigid rationalism/irrationalism dichotomy as conceived by logical empiricism and the Popperian methodology. The existence of cognitive values, in fact, prevents theoretical choice from being reduced to rules that are totally transparent to logical and methodological analysis: “[For my critics] objectivity enters science [. . .] through the processes by which theories are tested, justified, or judged. Those processes do not or, at least, need not, involve subjective factors at all. They can be governed by a set of (objective) criteria shared by the entire group competent to judge” (Kuhn 1977: 326–7). On the contrary, for Kuhn the existence of cognitive values shows how subjective elements are inevitably present in the choice of theories. In Kuhn’s essay, two fundamental reasons are found. First, each scientist may have a different system of preference, that is, he may give greater or lesser weight to any cognitive value, for example, sacrificing simplicity to a large extent in favour of even a slight increase in empirical accuracy, or vice versa.17 Secondly, the values are subject to different and legitimate interpretations.18 This implies that cognitive values give ample space to the personality of each scientist, not to mention that the relative weight and interpretations are themselves historically conditioned: “little knowledge of history is required to suggest that both the application of these values and, more obviously, the relative weights attached to them have varied markedly with the time and also the field of application” (Kuhn 1977: 335). Nevertheless, the existence of subjective factors related to the personality of each scientist must not allow us to forget that cognitive values work as rules or maxims that no researcher can afford to ignore: the criteria of choice [. . .] function not as rules, which determine choice, but as values, which influence it. Two men deeply committed to the same values may nevertheless, in particular situations, make different choices as, in fact, they do. But that difference in outcome ought not to suggest that the values scientists share are less than critically important either to their decision or to the development of the enterprise in which they participate”. (Kuhn 1977: 331)

Kuhn’s assertions are surely too vague to explain the complex problems related to the choice of theory. However, it is observations like these that have given rise to the

See Kuhn, (1977: 324): “[Two scientists may] differ about the relative weights to be accorded to these or other criteria when several are deployed together.” 18 See Kuhn, (1977: 324): “Perhaps they interpret simplicity differently or have different convictions about the range of fields within which the consistency criterion must be met.” 17

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extensive literature written on scientific persuasion.19 In addition, they have brought to the fore the studies on the function of cognitive values. The odd question is that moral values have continued to be ignored or, worse, rejected by those philosophers of science who are interested in shedding light on theoretical choice. The possibility of moral values entering the scientific sphere has been seen, almost as a conditioned reflex, as a threat to the objectivity of scientific research. The books by Larry Laudan (1984) and Hugh Lacey (2005) – certainly among the most far-reaching works on the subject – clearly illustrate this attitude. Starting from the introduction, Laudan (1984: xi) makes it quite clear that he does not intend to deal with moral values, relegating them to the “burgeoning, and decidedly second-rate, literature that agonises over the ethical dilemmas posed by science and technology.” Even more clearly, Lacey notes how an admission that cognitive values play an important role in scientific research does not imply abandoning the theory of the moral neutrality of science. He states: “social values [. . .] have no legitimate place among the ground for soundly accepting theories and making sound knowledge claims” (Lacey 2005: xi–xii). The assumption of this position is clearly that moral values have no cognitive scope. From this the dualism between cognitive (concerning science) and moral (in the sense that it includes the social and political) emerges. This dualism, which is at the heart of empiricist epistemology, has been criticised by many. Post-modernism, feminist epistemology, the strong programme in the sociology of knowledge, anthropology of science – and perhaps I have not exhausted the list – have the explicit purpose of dissipating the cognitive in the social sphere: what appears to be authentic knowledge of reality is deconstructed to show how it has been accepted thanks to negotiations of interest or in any case to relationships of a social nature.20 As I have already pointed out on more than one occasion, criticisms of empiricism made by the pragmatist must be separated from this, in many respects inconvenient, company. For pragmatism, moral values (again, also social and political) also have a cognitive scope, which we will see more closely when we examine the theory of truth proposed by Peirce and Dewey’s idea of considering moral values as ‘empirical hypotheses’. In many ways, the aim of pragmatism is the opposite of that of postmodernism: pragmatists do not want to reduce scientific knowledge to the social, but to show how the social and scientific are closely connected in any cognitive research. A distinction must be made (it is always useful to clarify concepts), but we should never forget that we are dealing with different aspects of a single research, the aim of which is to arrive at the truth. I have anticipated many issues that will be discussed at a later stage. However, even though it is a digression, it is very useful to compare pragmatism with other

19 See, for example, Pera (1994) and Pera and Shea (1991). I have also dealt with this topic in Barrotta (1998). 20 I have discussed the limits of the strong programme in the sociology of knowledge and anthropology of science in Barrotta (1998). Feminist epistemology owes a great deal, perhaps even its actual inception, to Merchant’s famous book (1980).

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philosophical positions in order to highlight its peculiarity in the criticism of empiricism. For example, the sociologists of the strong programme believe that reducing the cognitive to the social can be defended by showing how social values lead causally to the acceptance of cognitive values.21 If a scientist gives more importance to certain epistemic values or offers a specific interpretation of them (remember that these are the two ways in which Kuhn introduced the ‘subjective’ elements in theoretical choice), this can be explained by the social context in which he works. It should be pointed out that not all those who endorse reducing the cognitive domain to the social context also subscribe to the causal explanation model proposed by sociologists of the strong programme.22 However, the point illustrates the peculiarity of pragmatism with respect to all the currents mentioned above: sociologists propose a unidirectional pattern of explanation (or, for others, of understanding) that goes from the social to the scientific. For pragmatists, on the other hand, the most correct pattern is interactional (or ‘transactional’, as we shall see later when we refer back to Dewey). Again, all types of values are inextricably intertwined in research, where each one of them changes and enables us to understand the function performed by the others. As I have already said, we will come back to these issues. In any case, these claims allow us to return to thick concepts. Putnam, who has done a great deal to redirect the attention to pragmatism, even on the part of philosophers of science, underlined that cognitive values have demonstrated that they have both a descriptive dimension and an evaluative one. When we say that a theory is simple, to quote one of the cognitive values mentioned by Kuhn, we describe it and evaluate it at the same time. This alone is a good argument against empiricism. Indeed, if it is accepted that, as this has generally been the case since Kuhn, cognitive values are fundamental to scientific objectivity, then it becomes more difficult to deny similar objectivity with respect to moral values. As Putnam writes in Realism with a Human Face: If coherence and simplicity are values, and if we cannot deny without falling into total selfrefuting subjectivism that they are objective [. . .] then the classic argument against the objectivity of ethical values is totally undercut. For the argument turned on precisely the ‘softness’ of ethical values – the lack of a noncontroversial ‘method’, and so on – and on the alleged ‘queerness’ of the very notion of an action guiding fact. But all values are in the boat; if those arguments show that ethical values are totally subjective, then cognitive values are totally subjective as well (Putnam 1990: 140)

As I have said many times, the issue of the identification and explanation of the objectivity of science and morals still needs to be explained. We will come to this in Chap. 4, when I will broach the problem of truth in more detail. First, we still have to address the question of how moral values inevitably come into scientific research.

21

The standpoint of the strong programme is certainly more complex, but I do not wish to reopen here the more detailed criticism that I have already set out elsewhere. See Barrotta (1998, Chapter 1). 22 On this subject I would again refer the reader to Barrotta (1998).

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References Agapow, P. M., et al. (2004). The impact of species concept on biodiversity studies. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 79, 161–179. Agazzi, E. (1992). Il bene, il male e la scienza. Milano: Rusconi. Ayer, A. (1946). Language, truth, and logic (1st ed., 1936). London: Victor Gollancz. Barrotta, P. (1998). La dialettica scientifica. Per un nuovo razionalismo critico. Turin: UTETlibreria. Barrotta, P. (2000). Scientific dialectics in action. The case of Joseph Priestley. In P. Machamer, A. Baltas, & M. Pera (Eds.), Scientific controversies (pp. 154–176). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barrotta, P. (2008). Why economists should be unhappy with the economics of happiness. Economics and Philosophy, 24, 145–165. Barrotta, P. (2011). James lovelock, Gaia theory, and the rejection of fact/value dualism. Environmental Philosophy, 8(2), 95–113. Blackburn, S. (1981). Rule-following and moral realism. In S. Holtzman & C. Leich (Eds.), Wittgenstein: To follow a rule (pp. 163–187). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Blackburn, S. (1992). Morality and thick concepts: Through thick and thin. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume, 66, 285–299. Blackburn, S. (2013). Disentangling Disentangling. In S. Kirchin (Ed.), Thick concepts (pp. 121– 135). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Crocker, T. P. (1998). Wittgenstein’s practices and Peirce’s habits. Agreement in human activity. History of Philosophy Quarterly, 15(4), 457–493. Dewey, J. (1916). What pragmatism means by practical. In Dewey (1998). The essential Dewey (Vol. 1 & 2). L. Hickman & T. Alexander (Eds.). Bloomigton/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. (Vol. 2, pp. 377–386). Dewey, J. (1925). Experience and nature. In Dewey (1969–1991). The collected works. J. A. Boydstone (Ed.). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. (The later works, Vol. 1). Dewey, J. (1938). Logic: The theory of inquiry. In Dewey (1969–1991). The collected works. (The later works, Vol. 12). Foot, P. (1958a). Moral arguments. In Virtues and vices (2002, pp. 96–109). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Foot, P. (1958b–1959). Moral beliefs. In Virtues and vices (2002, pp. 110–131). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gibbard, A. (1992). Morality and thick concepts. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary volumes, 66, 267–283. Hickman, L. (1990). Dewey’s pragmatic technology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hume, D. (1964). An enquiry concerning human understanding, 1777. In T. H. Green & T. H. Grose (Eds.), Philosophical works (Vol. 4, pp. 3–135). Aalen: Scientia Verlag. James, W. (1907). Pragmatism. A new name for some old ways of thinking. Popular Lectures on Philosophy. In Pragmatism and the meaning of truth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978. Kirchin, S. (Ed.). (2013). Thick concepts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kuhn, T. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions (1st ed., 1962). Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press. Kuhn, T. (1977). Objectivity, value judgment, and theory choice. In The essential tension (pp. 320–339). Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press. Lacey, H. (2005). Is science value free? Values and scientific understanding (1st ed., 1999). London/New York: Routledge. LaFollete, H., & Shanks, N. (1996). Brute science: The dilemmas of animal experimentation. London: Routledge. Laudan, L. (1984). Science and values. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Maclaurin, J., & Sterelny, K. (2008). What is biodiversity? Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press. Mayr, E. (1997). This is biology. The science of the living world. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McDowell, J. (1981). Non-cognitivism and rule-following. In S. Holtzman & C. Leich (Eds.), Wittgenstein: To follow a rule. London: Routldge and Kegan Paul, 1981: 141–162. Merchant, C. (1980). The death of nature. Women, ecology, and the scientific revolution. San Francisco: Harper & Row. Minelli, A. (1993). Biological systematics. The state of art. London: Chapman & Hall. Mongin, P. (2006). Value judgments and value neutrality in economics. Economica, 73, 257–286. Murdoch, I. (1970). The sovereignty of good. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Negrotti, M. (2011). Scienza, tecnologia e ambivalenze etiche. In P. Barrotta, G. O. Longo, & M. Negrotti (Eds.), Scienza, tecnologia e valori morali (pp. 82–96). Roma: Armando. Peirce, C. S. (1878). How to make our ideas clear. In Peirce (1931–5). Collected papers. C. Hartshorne & P. Weiss (Eds.). Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. (Vol. V, pp. 248–271). Peirce, C. S. (1905a). What pragmatism is. In Peirce (1931–5). Collected papers (Vol. V, pp. 272– 292). Peirce, C. S. (1905b). Issues of pragmaticism. In Peirce (1931–5). Collected papers (Vol. V, pp. 293–313). Pera, M. (1994). The discourses of science. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press. Pera, M., & Shea, W. R. (Eds.). (1991). Persuading science: The art of scientific rhetoric. Canton, MA: Science History Publications. Putnam, H. (1990). Realism with a human face. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Putnam, H. (1992). Il pragmatismo: una questione aperta (Italian original ed.). Rome/Bari: Laterza. Putnam, H. (2002). The collapse of the fact/value dichotomy and other essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rorty, R. (1961). Pragmatism, categories, and language. The Philosophical Review, 70(2), 197–223. Rorty, R. (1982). Consequences of pragmatism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Russell, B. (1997). Religion and science (1st ed., 1935). New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sarkar, S. (2005). Biodiversity and environmental philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scheffler, S. (1987). Morality, through thick and thin. A critical notice of ethics and the limits of philosophy. The Philosophical Review, xcvi(3), 411–434. Sen, A. (1985). The standard of living: Concepts and critiques. In G. Hawthorn (Ed.), The Tunner lectures. Cambridge: Clare Hall. Sen, A. (1992). Inequality reexamined. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Väyrynen, P. (2013). The lewd, the rude, and the nasty. A study of thick concepts in ethics. New York: Oxford University Press. Williams, B. (1985). Ethics and the limits of philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Wilson, E. O. (2001). The diversity of life (1st ed., 1992). London: Penguin Books.

Chapter 3

Values and Inductive Risk

Abstract Values are not only necessary to establish the meaning of some scientific terms, they also enter into the consequences of accepting or rejecting a theory. This argument, based on ‘inductive risk’, was proposed many years ago and has been returned to and criticised by those who defend the ideal of value-free science. We will examine why these criticisms are unconvincing also by presenting an example: the controversy over climate change, which also has the advantage of showing an unexpected link between this chapter and the previous one. Furthermore, in the last two sections we will see why constructivist concepts of risk must equally be rejected. Keywords Climate sensitivity · Conceptual frameworks · Consensus in science · Constructivism · Evidence (and total e.) · Experts (scientific e.) · Incommensurability · Reasonable doubt · Relevance judgments (see evidence) · Risk (risky decisions, cultural theory of risk) · Statistics (Bayesian s., classical s.) · Vajont dam · Value-free science

3.1

Inductive Risk

Between the late 1940s and early 1950s, C. West Churchman (1948, 1956) and Richard Rudner (1953) proposed a simple and elegant argument that shows how moral evaluations are inevitably included in the acceptance of a theory. If this is true, the argument represents another serious objection to the ideal of value-free science. Advocates of the ideal agree that problems selected by a researcher may be affected by moral values. There is obviously nothing wrong with choosing to undertake, for example, research in cancer treatment because we want to help humanity (or, more prosaically, because we want the fame and the money that comes from it). Similarly, they concede that these values may influence the way in which a hypothesis is initially formulated. In formulating a hypothesis, a scientist can be psychologically influenced by their own values and their prejudices too. However, for those who support the ideal, the acceptance of a theory is, and must be, totally transparent to the logical and methodological analysis. In their view, the acceptance of a hypothesis is a matter that concerns only the support that the facts © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 P. Barrotta, Scientists, Democracy and Society, Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning 16, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74938-9_3

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give to the hypothesis. At most, as we have seen before, a role is allocated to cognitive values, but certainly not to moral values. Therefore, to admit that moral judgments essentially form part of the way that a theory is accepted means ipso facto abandoning the ideal of the moral neutrality of science. Churchman and Rudner’s theory at that time sparked off a lively debate that calmed down over time.1 More recently, it was brought to the fore by Heather Douglas, which was then followed by another series of interventions that have, as we will see, made some steps forward with respect to the previous debate.2 The argument starts with two premises. The first premise concerns the inductive nature of scientific inferences: empirical evidence can only make a hypothesis more or less likely, but it can never completely verify it. The second premise is that accepting or rejecting a hypothesis is an integral part of any scientific research. From these two premises, it follows that making risky decisions is inherent in science, decisions that concern not only the value of truth, but also all those values, including moral ones, that fall within the consequences of the decision to accept or reject a hypothesis. It is in this context that scientific research acquires an ethical dimension. As Rudner writes (Rudner 1953: 2): since no scientific hypothesis is ever completely verified, in accepting a hypothesis the scientist must make the decision that the evidence is sufficiently strong or that the probability is sufficiently high to warrant the acceptance of the hypothesis. Obviously, our decision regarding the evidence and respecting how strong is ‘strong enough’, is going to be a function of the importance, in the typically ethical sense, of making a mistake in accepting or rejecting the hypothesis.

Here, we can clearly see the opening to the pragmatic dimension of science. The statement ‘H is a sufficiently confirmed hypothesis’ is considered from the point of view of an action that has set itself certain aims. The point is clearly explained by Churchman (1948: 259): “In pragmatic methodology, every scientific hypothesis is considered to be a possible course of action for accomplishing a certain end, or set of ends. Pragmatically speaking, an inability to say what one intends to do as a result of accepting one out of a set of alternative hypotheses, is an inability to state the hypotheses themselves in adequate terms. Statements like ‘we merely want to find out so-and-so’ represent pragmatically incomplete formulations”. This is an obvious application of the pragmatic maxim. Rudner gives some examples that clarify the nature of the argument. The first example is the industrial quality control of a product, compared with more ethically demanding choices. The hypothesis that a medicine does not contain toxic ingredients requires a great deal of attention because of the dramatic consequences its erroneous acceptance could have. In this case, a very high level of empirical

1 In particular, see Jeffrey (1956) and Levi (1960), to whom I will later refer in more detail. See also Hempel (1965, 1981), Lacey (2005: 71 ff.), McMullin (1983). Douglas, in Douglas (2009), provides an extensive overview of the debate. 2 See Douglas (2000) and (2009). See also Betz (2013), whom I will later refer to extensively, Dorato (2004), Elliott (2011), John (2015), Mitchell (2004), Steele (2012).

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confirmation is needed. On the other hand, we would be willing to take greater risks if the hypothesis involved the reliability of a machine that produces belt buckles. In other words, “how sure we need to be before we accept a hypothesis will depend on how serious a mistake would be” (Rudner 1953: 2). According to the debate, to further clarify the argument, reference is often made to classical statistical analysis. In statistics, two types of errors are distinguished. The error of the first type is to accept as true a hypothesis that turns out to be false. The error of the second type, on the contrary, is to reject as false a hypothesis that is true. Classical statistical analysis always shows – and this is an important point – that for each given sample or empirical evidence we can reduce the probability of making a mistake only if we simultaneously increase the probability of making the opposite mistake. Consequently, when we accept a hypothesis, we are faced with conflicting goals. According to Heather Douglas (2009), who has insisted on this point more than any other, in statistics, moral evaluations inevitably arise from the way in which such a conflict is approached. In fact, how to balance the opposing objectives will largely depend on the foreseeable consequences of a wrong action, together with their importance in the light of our moral values. In summary, in classical statistics, the moral decision is reflected in the very choice of giving greater weight to one of the two types of error. This reference to statistical analysis is useful to understand the debate on the possible ethical consequences of ‘inductive risk’. However, it would be wrong to think that the argument applies only to statistical hypotheses, since its intent is certainly more general. Not surprisingly, Rudner makes an explicit reference in his essay to hypotheses whose nature is clearly non-statistical. An example, in particular, made by Rudner (1953: 2–3), appears to be historically interesting: “It would be interesting and instructive, for example, to know just how high a degree of probability the Manhattan project scientists demanded for the hypothesis that no uncontrollable chain reaction would occur, before they proceeded with the first atomic bomb detonation”. Rudner was probably referring to a concern expressed by Edward Teller. According to some calculations Teller made, the atom bomb could trigger the explosion of nitrogen in the atmosphere or hydrogen in the seas. If that had happened, the explosion of the first atomic bomb would have incinerated the entire planet. It was a highly unlikely hypothesis, but Oppenheimer took it seriously. The consequences of making any mistake would have been too frightening to contemplate, therefore no one could afford to make a mistake. Although implausible, the hypothesis was carefully analysed until Hans Bethe found that there were unjustified assumptions in Teller’s calculations. In the previously mentioned statistical terminology, the scientists of the Manhattan project did their best not to make the mistake of rejecting a theory that might have turned out to be true.3 There are very many other examples that could easily be cited. It is more interesting to recall the debate raised by Churchman and Rudner’s thesis. Some

3

The event is described in detail by Rhodes, in Rhodes (1986: 418 ff.).

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criticise Churchman and Rudner’s thesis by suggesting that we must consider a theory accepted only when the scientific community agrees that further research would not be relevant from a cognitive point of view (cf. Lacey 2005: 13–4 and 71 ff.). As we have seen, the only way to reduce both errors (first and second type) is to increase the size of the sample, thus increasing the empirical evidence available. Understanding the acceptance of a theory in this way is equivalent to the suggestion to suspend judgement until further empirical evidence is no longer considered cognitively interesting.4 Others believe that Churchman and Rudner’s thesis only concerns scientists who have a role as consultants, not scientists pursuing research solely for the purpose of increasing knowledge (cf. Mitchell 2004). In the terms here presented, the objection consists of observing that the argument relies on a (dubious) hidden premise: given the extensive authority of science in society, the acceptance of a hypothesis by the scientist inevitably influences the decision-makers. Even if it seems plausible, Rudner’s thesis would confuse the processes of forming scientific belief with the action of communicating it to the decision-maker in order to influence its evaluations.5 There are others still who emphasise that the acceptance of a hypothesis rarely has definite consequences (cf. Levi 1960). The importance of the possible consequences depends on the various problems that are to be addressed. In some cases, we should be very discerning with the hypothesis, while in others much less. Since a hypothesis is potentially relevant for an indefinite number of problems, we cannot speak of its acceptance or of its rejection in general, but only in the case of specific problems. Thus, it is claimed that the argument uses a dubious hidden premise according to which accepting a hypothesis would be

4

This is an extremely weak objection that ignores the pragmatic aspects underlined by Rudner. The standard defended by Lacey is not always achievable. Moreover, suspending the decision of acceptance pending sufficiently conclusive evidence (in the sense that further research would no longer be of any cognitive interest) is already a decision the consequences of which must be assessed in the light of moral values. Deciding to suspend judgment is already a decision that, in some cases, could also prove to be dramatic. In the next section, we will look at a case like this. 5 As Sandra Mitchell writes (Mitchell 2004: 250–1): “The value appropriate to generating the belief and the values appropriate to generating the action are different.” In reality, as we have seen in Chap. 2, the two moments are closely linked. Moreover, Mitchell’s analysis is in some ways curious because it identifies the decision-maker with the political decision-maker (cf. Mitchell 2004: 251). However, the acceptance of a hypothesis may well influence public opinion, regardless of political decision-makers. Think of the hypothesis that there is a link between cancer and meat consumption, a hypothesis that has influenced the dietary decisions of many people. In some ways, the objection made by Hempel (1965, 1981) is similar but also simpler and more incisive. Hempel greatly plays down the importance of Rudner’s argument, observing how it only concerns applied science, while “in a general way, it seems clear that the standards governing the inductive procedures of pure science reflect the objective of obtaining a certain goal, which might be described somewhat vaguely as the attainment of an increasingly reliable, extensive, and theoretically systematized body of information about the world” (Hempel 1965: 93). We will return to the distinction between pure science and applied science in Sect. 4.3.

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equivalent to choosing to act on the basis of that hypothesis, something that cannot happen without specifying the objective in consideration.6 These objections are related in various ways to more general issues, and we will address them later, such as the distinction between ‘pure science’ and ‘applied science’ and the scientist’s responsibility given the innumerable uses that society can make of the results of their research (see Sects. 4.3, 5.4 and 5.5). Here, however, I will deal with a more specific objection, because it explicitly rejects the second of the two premises: that acceptance or rejection of a hypothesis is an integral part of scientific research. It is an objection that is as simple as it is seemingly effective. In fact, by removing responsibility from the scientist for accepting or refusing hypotheses means depriving them of the responsibility of making risky decisions laden with moral consequences. The sole task of the scientist would be to establish the degree of confirmation of a hypothesis in the light of the evidence available. Let us overlook the observation that the proposal seems to be remarkably in contrast to scientific practice: few scientists and philosophers of science would be willing to grant that the acceptance or rejection of hypotheses is not part of the scientist’s work. As we will see, such a critical observation might be sidestepped. At the moment, it is more interesting to understand its conceptual scope, deferring the question as to whether concrete scientific practice is consistent with the proposal or not. This objection to Rudner and Churchman was developed by Richard Jeffrey (1956) and has been taken up by the current debate by Betz (2013). For Jeffrey, as we have said, the sole task of science is to establish the degree of confirmation of a hypothesis. The responsibility of taking into account the consequences of acceptance or rejection would presumably be up to the decision-maker, that is to whoever uses scientific knowledge, not up to the scientist in the capacity of scientist.7 The idea that we need to reason in terms of acceptance and rejection is encouraged by classical statistics, which, as we have seen, requires the scientist to specify, by means of objective probability estimates, the risk of accepting a false hypothesis or of rejecting a true hypothesis. However, there is no need to resort to the conceptual system of classical statistics. According to the strategy proposed by Betz, support for a hypothesis should be weakened to the point where the whole scientific community

6 This criticism is certainly very pertinent indeed, even though it touches on a more general theme which we will return to in Sects. 5.4 and 5.5. 7 Thus formulated, the objection finds an answer in Rudner’s essay. As Rudner writes (Rudner 1953: 3–4): “one objection which has been raised against this line of argument by those of them who are suspicious of the intrusion of value questions into the objective realm of science, is that actually the scientist’s task is only to determine the degree of confirmation or the strength of the evidence which exists for a hypothesis. [. . .] But a little reflection will show that the plausibility of this objection is apparent merely. For the determination that the degree of confirmation is say, p, or that the strength of evidence is such and such, which is on this view being held to be the indispensable task of the scientist qua scientist, is clearly nothing more than the acceptance by the scientist of the hypothesis that the degree of confirmation is p or the strength of the evidence is such and such”.

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agrees on the new evaluation. Instead of accepting or refuting the hypothesis, researchers could specify the level of uncertainty in terms of their degree of belief in the truth of hypotheses and leave it up to others to decide whether or not to act on the basis of the evaluation thus obtained. Faced with inconclusive empirical evidence, the scientific community could simply state that their knowledge at present does not allow them to draw precise conclusions regarding the acceptance of the hypothesis and consequently scientists qualify the hypothesis with appropriate clauses specifying the degree of uncertainty. Therefore, in order to determine ideas, if the initial hypothesis is H, the weakening process would consist of introducing second-level hypotheses – let’s call them H* – graded as being weaker, depending on the degree of uncertainty. For example, given the evidence available, many might not agree on the advisability of accepting H, even though everyone might agree on the H* hypothesis by which it is at least plausible that H is true. The weakening process should continue up to the point where the acceptance of such a hypothesis thereby qualified (H*) is beyond any reasonable doubt.8 It would be up to the political decision-maker, not the scientist, to investigate whether the degree of uncertainty established by the scientific community makes it advisable or not to act according to the hypothesis. Clearly, even these H* hypotheses, no matter how weak, may prove to be wrong, and therefore their acceptance is somewhat ‘risky’ for the simple reason that all of our assertions are fallible. However, it must be recognised that it would be crass to confuse the rejection of Rudner’s theory on inductive risk with the rejection of fallibilism. It should in fact be noted that an H* assertion that explicitly and comprehensively includes our state of ignorance regarding the truth of H is corroborated enough to exclude any legitimate doubt as to its acceptability. It would be pointless to deny the H* hypothesis on the basis of scepticism equivalent to the systemic doubt made famous by Descartes. This is indeed a philosophical doubt that is a long way away from scientific and daily practice: from the fact that every assertion, even the most corroborated, is fallible, it does not follow that the decision to act upon that assertion is arbitrary. From the point of view of the philosophy of pragmatism, it would be inadmissible to resort to Cartesian doubt to reject this criticism of Rudner’s argument. For pragmatism, one must surely differentiate between the doubt that arises from

See Betz (2013: 214): “such hypotheses are sufficiently weak, or can be further weakened, so that the available evidence suffices to confirm them beyond reasonable doubt.” Betz (2013: 213) illustrates the strategy in this way: “Scientists [. . .] might make use of various epistemic modalities (e.g. it is unlikely/it is possible/it is plausible/etc. that. . .) or simply conditionalize on unwarranted assumptions (e.g. if we deem these error probabilities acceptable, then . . ., based on such-and-such a scheme of probative values, we find that . . ., given that set of normative, non-epistemic assumptions, the following policy measure is advisable. . .). In sum, scientists as policy advisors are far from being required to accept or refute plain hypotheses.”

8

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specific reasons which lead us to doubt, and the sceptical hypothetical doubt which is merely an expression of a philosophical position.9 Nevertheless, I believe that the objection is wrong, although it undoubtedly helps us to better understand the limitation of Rudner’s analysis. The argument proposed by Rudner continues to make, at least in principle, the separation between the epistemic and the moral possible. We have seen that Rudner’s argument starts from two premises. The first tells us that we must assign a degree of probability to the hypothesis, since complete verification is impossible. The second one tells us that the scientist must consequently take a risky decision when accepting or rejecting the hypothesis based on the estimation of probability previously assigned. Thus clarified, Rudner’s argument does not seem to necessarily lead to the rejection of a valuefree science. It could be argued that the assignment of a degree of probability is a matter that remains strictly epistemic, while the moral dimension only appears when the problem of accepting or rejecting the hypotheses is raised, given the moral implications that the decision involves. If we eliminate the second of the two premises, the ideal of a morally neutral science remains intact. It is by harnessing this feature of Rudner’s argument that Jeffrey and Betz hope to solve the entanglement between the epistemic and the moral domains.10 I do not believe that Jeffrey and Betz’s strategy is particularly convincing. As a matter of fact, I believe that the entanglement between the epistemic and the moral already emerges when the scientist assigns a degree of probability to a hypothesis. In other words, the entanglement is also present in the first of the two premises. I will support this argument by showing that in any case they have to decide which facts are relevant to defining the evidence with which the degree of probability is established. These relevance judgements are risky decisions and, as such, are already laden with moral consequences. Once this point is understood, it is possible to see why it is the weakening strategy itself proposed by Betz that reproduces a choice of a moral nature. Rather than offering an analytical explanation of these statements and then simplifying them with case studies, we will proceed this time in reverse, starting from a case study that illustrates them and then going back to more analytical considerations. This approach is, I believe, more effective rhetorically. In the next 9 As Peirce (1877, 5.376: 232) writes in his famous essay: “Some philosophers have imagined that to start an inquiry it was only necessary to utter a question whether orally or by setting it down upon paper, and have even recommended us to begin our studies with questioning everything! But the mere putting of a proposition into the interrogative form does not simulate the mind to any struggle after belief. There must be a real and living doubt, and without this all discussion is idle.” I will come back to this theme in Sect. 4.1. 10 I have simplified Rudner’s position here. See note 8. Rudner, in fact, observes that when a scientist assigns a degree of probability to a proposition, he puts forward a hypothesis on a different level. To be precise, he proposes a second-level hypothesis, H*: ‘The H hypothesis has a degree of probability p’. In doing so, he ipso facto accepts a hypothesis, albeit of a different level. The decision to accept or reject H* is a risky decision in itself which, as such, has ethical implications. Rudner is undoubtedly right. However, his observation alone is not enough to reject the weakening strategy proposed by Betz.

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section we will look at the controversy over climate change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models. This choice is not a random one. In fact, IPCC models are cited by Betz (2013) to show how the scientific community consciously adopts the strategy of weakening and how this strategy makes the preservation of the ideal of a value-free science possible.11

3.2

The Epistemology of Climate Change

The IPCC has done an excellent job. Policymakers Summaries, and even Technical Summaries are also accessible to non-experts; a commendable style if we bear in mind the need to communicate the research results to as wide an audience as possible. In addition, the types and levels of uncertainty are clearly explained. The fourth report (AR4) of 2007, when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the IPCC, distinguishes two types of uncertainty: structural uncertainty which looks into the possibility that the models used do not include all the relevant processes or factors and the uncertainty regarding estimates of a given magnitude when, for example, the data are held to be inaccurate or not fully representative. In order not to confuse the reader, the members of each workgroup were also given guidelines to ensure the uniformity of language. So, for example, when you read that a certain result is ‘very likely’ it must mean that it has a probability greater than 90%, but if the term ‘unlikely’ is used, then it must denote a likelihood of less than 33%. In both cases of uncertainty, it is made clear that the assigned probabilities use the subjective judgement that the experts give on the quality and completeness of the evidence available.12 The IPCC’s prestige is such that it would be ill-advised for anyone to challenge their conclusions. Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway (Oreskes and Conway 2010, Chapter 6) have documented that, at least in some cases, the ‘negationists’ have criticised the conclusions reached by the IPCC by disregarding or even falsifying the facts. Nor would things change if we differentiated between ‘negationists’ and ‘sceptics’, a distinction that in any case needs to be made to correctly understand the diverse face of IPCC critics. The ‘orthodox’ position on climate change, often equated with the results obtained by the IPCC, should be subdivided into three main claims: (a) The climate is getting warmer, (b) The change is to a large extent caused by man, (c) This change is a danger that must be mitigated by political action.

11

In some respects, John (2015) makes a criticism similar to mine. I would like to thank Gustavo Cevolani for bringing John’s paper to my attention after he read the Italian version of my book. 12 See Solomon et al. (2007), Box TS.1. See also the Uncertainty Guidance Note of the fourth report, subsequently refined in the fifth report.

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True ‘negationists’ focus on (a) and (b), while the ‘sceptics’ simply deny claim (c).13 Bjørn Lomborg offers the example of a non-negationist sceptic. Lomborg does not deny the anthropic origin of climate warming but believes there are other priorities besides reducing carbon dioxide. He writes, “we cannot just talk about CO2, when we talk about dealing with climate change – we need to bring into the dialogue considerations both about carbon emission and about economics, for the benefit of both humans and the environment” (Lomborg 2007: 210). However, Lomborg’s position also seems to be unfounded. The real problem is not the change in itself, but the extreme speed of change, which would make the adaptation process (biological, but also technological and economic) augured by Lomborg, difficult. It is not my intention to question the results of the IPCC (in addition, it would be rather reckless for a philosopher who has not had any specific training in a complex discipline like climatology). I have distanced myself from the ‘negationists’ precisely to reject from the very outset, the reaction, almost instinctive, of those who succumb to the psychological strength of the third of the premises I have set out in the Introduction: if it is argued that the IPCC implicitly assumes moral value judgements, then this casts doubt on its scientific objectivity (and so adds grist to the negationists’ mill, who generally unleash on the IPCC the accusation of hiding behind an ideology made up of a few numbers). This kind of argumentative chain does not impress me in the slightest because my purpose is to deny the principle underlying it: indeed science can be objective and evaluative at the same time. The purpose is to show how the two points, objective collection of facts, and the moral evaluation cannot be separated. When we address the problems posed by pseudosciences in democratic societies, we will be in a position to better appreciate the enormous difference between distorting or ignoring the facts (as the ‘negationists’ do) and the thesis that in scientific research the collection of facts and moral evaluations cannot be separated into two logically different moments. Rudner’s argument was in support of the latter view. It is by no means an invitation to justify the pseudosciences; and with its research, the IPCC illustrates this point extremely well. However, there is a very simple way to avoid misunderstanding. The analyses of the disputes surrounding global warming have focused on the debate between the ‘negationists’ and the IPCC. In doing so, it has not been sufficiently noted that IPCC research has also been criticised for providing an overly cautious assessment of the dangers relating to climate change, that is to say, from a point of view diametrically opposed to that of the ‘negationists’. The epistemological analysis of this, less known, controversy will illustrate the entanglement between the epistemic and the moral without falling into the pernicious misunderstanding that, ultimately, it intends to support ‘negationism’. Discussions on climate change have had a precedent that has alarmed public opinion worldwide: the so-called ‘ozone hole’. It is worth keeping this in mind

13

This point is strongly emphasised by Coady and Corry (2013, Chapter 1).

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because we will again find a similar philosophical problem with regard to the discussion on the theory advocated by the IPCC. Chlorofluorocarbons were synthesised in 1931 and later sold under the trade name Freon by the renowned DuPont chemical company. At that time, it was well known that chemical compounds could be hazardous to health and therefore all the necessary testing was carried out to determine their safety. Having passed these tests, no one objected to the use of chlorofluorocarbons as a coolant in refrigerators and other domestic appliances. It was not until much later that Molina and Rowland discovered that chlorofluorocarbons brought about harmful effects through a complex and unexpected causal chain. Chlorofluorocarbons were responsible for the depletion of the ozone layer (the famous ‘ozone hole’) and found that this depletion could in turn cause skin cancer. Was DuPont wrong in not considering the possibility of these or similar causal chains, potentially dangerous for human beings? It would seem legitimate to answer the question affirmatively. After all, it is always advisable to try to reduce the risk inherent in new technologies. However, one must consider that it is impossible to take into account all the potential causal chains resulting from our decisions, even the most trivial one. In principle, for example, we should check whether our decision to slam our fist down the table could cause a hurricane in the Philippines or if the decision to turn on a light in the home might result in a short circuit enough to trigger a black out all over the city in which we live. It is impossible to dispense with conceptual schemes that tell us which potential effects, among the infinite number possible, we should check. Obviously, our conceptual framework may prove to be too narrow that it excludes potential dangers, or be excessively wide, making us waste time and energy in carrying out unnecessary controls. There are no precise rules to determine where to draw the line. In this context, there is inevitably room for personal judgement on the part of researchers or the scientific community as a whole. In the case of freon, it should be pointed out that before Molina and Rowland no one could have imagined that it might be hazardous. In other cases, however, the scientific community must inevitably make risky decisions regarding what facts are to be considered relevant to evaluate the probability of a hypothesis. Such is the case of the various assumptions regarding global warming. The debate on climate change concerns the effects of the production of man-made greenhouse gases, of which carbon dioxide is only one example, albeit the most significant one. For scientists therefore, it is crucial to solve the problem of the impact of each greenhouse gas on average temperature changes. In the late 1970s, Juley G. Charney proposed a thought experiment. He assumed that the amount of carbon dioxide was doubled from a conventionally fixed level at the time prior to the industrial revolution. The direct application of the laws of physics gives an unequivocal answer: the average increase would be 1.2
C. However, this quantity gives us only a very rough idea of climate sensitivity in relation to a two-fold increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The most serious problems arise from the fact that this measurement deliberately ignores all the feedbacks (positive and negative) that are triggered by the increase in temperature caused by the action of the new concentration of carbon dioxide. If the prevalent feedbacks are positive we

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will have a further rise in temperature, if they are negative we will have the opposite effect. The challenge therefore is to calculate the climate sensitivity (relative to the increase in carbon dioxide) including all the possible feedbacks, which is an extremely difficult challenge. Climate is a complex system, in which it is hard to determine in detail all the potential feedbacks. Assessing climatic sensitivity crucially depends on the boundary conditions that are taken into account. In principle, we should imagine a number of different climate sensitivity concepts, defined by the gradual addition of further feedbacks. There is nothing anti-scientific in the decision to stop at a certain point. It all depends on the relevance of a feedback in the light of the problems we have to face in the near future. Traditionally, researchers divide feedbacks into ‘slow’ and ‘fast’. Some unfold in a very short time scale. These are obviously present in all definitions of climatic sensitivity. Others are thought to be much slower. For example, the change in vegetation when temperature increases is measurable over centuries, those of ice sheets over dozens of centuries. Generally, climate models include all fast feedbacks and deliberately exclude those that are assessed as being slow enough to be regarded as negligible for prediction purposes. Once again, there is nothing unreasonable about this choice. There would be no point in making predictions now for several centuries to come. From here to a thousand years in the future, we have no idea of the size of the existing population, of its consumer patterns, and, of course, of the technology available. Perhaps the issue of climate change will no longer even exist because humanity will have disappeared for many other completely different reasons. Here, I have not offered a summary of the problems of climate science. I have only disclosed an epistemologically important question. The definition of the empirical meaning of climate sensitivity depends on conceptual frameworks, which lead to focus on some aspects of reality. IPCC studies imagine various scenarios, each characterised by different prevalent social, economic and technological systems, but the same meaning of climatic sensitivity is used in all of them, which excludes those feedbacks that are assessed as being sufficiently slow. As I said before, this is a reasonable choice, but it gives room to criticisms from those who think that the IPCC analyses are too cautious and optimistic. For the critics, there is an urgent need to expand the spectrum of feedbacks to be included in the definition of climatic sensitivity, and the reasons for this expansion are both moral and epistemic. An example of this type of criticism is given by James Lovelock. Above all, Lovelock (2009: 26) makes a methodological criticism of the models widely used by the IPCC: “[I have no great] confidence in the models that forecast future climates. [. . .] Discerning scientists at several of the major climate centres are making serious efforts to build climate models that are more comprehensive, but surely it is unwise of governments to base policies looking more than forty years into the future on forecasts made several years ago by models acknowledged to be incomplete.” Although he too was involved in the construction of models, Lovelock believes that the observations and measurements made in the field are more reliable; and these, he argues, do not tally with IPCC predictions. He mentions the rise in sea

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level, the speed at which floating ice shelves melt and the progressive reduction of the algae population. These two last elements are examples of positive feedback. For example, as regards algae, he notes that global warming causes surface water to tend to mix less with the nutrients in the deep water. In turn, the decline of algae concentrations leads to a further increase in temperature, consequently he writes: “Algal growth acts to cool the Earth by several mechanisms, including the removal of carbon dioxide from the air, so that warming reveals yet another global feedback on global heating.[. . .] So far as I am aware this phenomenon is not yet included in their models by climate professionals” (Lovelock 2009: 29). Lovelock’s arguments also deal with the measurement of climate sensitivity from another point of view. Because of the incompleteness of the models, climatologists find it reasonable to treat it as a constant, at least for the time period considered. And this is wrong. To quote one of his models, Lovelock (2009: 34–5) notes that This model experiment also raises the question of the validity of the constant called sensitivity, used in nearly all large climate models, such as those of the IPCC. It is defined as the rise of temperature when the carbon dioxide in the air of the model is doubled. Mathematics allows sensitivity to be constant if the equations of the model are linear; the recondite term ‘non-linear’ implies that properties such as temperature are not directly proportional to others, such as carbon dioxide, but are linked in ways that change with change.

For Lovelock, the Earth has now reached a tipping point, where even small disturbances may spontaneously lead the climate system to a very different balance from the initial one. In short, these are the reasons why Lovelock criticises the IPCC models as excessively cautious and optimistic. Lovelock’s arguments could fail to impress. After all, Lovelock is an independent scientist, not to mention the author of a highly controversial theory – the Gaia hypothesis – which many consider to be pseudoscience.14 However, what about James Hansen’s criticisms? In this case we have a climatologist whose reputation is not up for question. His authority is such that he was called as a consultant directly by the White House during the Bush administration (with a hint of irony, Hansen 2009, Chapter 1, writes that this interest was probably due to the fact that Vice President, Dick Cheney, had not quite understood his analysis). With Hansen, we find very detailed criticism and, once again, the central point is the measurement of climatic sensitivity. Hansen (2009: 44 and 76) too shows a certain degree of scepticism about the reliability of models that may not include some very important factors: “we don’t know what we don’t know – there may be other feedbacks. Climate sensitivity will never be defined accurately by models. [. . .] models are valuable, but only when used with knowledge of their capabilities and limitations.” For this reason, Hansen seeks more reliable answers in observations on Paleolithic climate, for example, by examining samples of the atmosphere that existed thousands of years ago and have remained trapped in the air bubbles in polar ice caps. From these observations, Hansen (2009: 82) concludes that IPCC models are wrong in not including the variation of polar ice in the models: “IPCC assumes [that] the ice sheet [melts] as if it 14

I consider this opinion to be excessive. On this, Barrotta (2011).

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were a giant ice cube. [. . .] Earth’s paleoclimate history shows the contrary.” Obviously, Hansen does not only state that the observations seem to contradict the predictions of the IPCC models. He also offers an explanation of the observations, based on the energy accumulated by the ocean and subsequently released: “I argue that Earth’s history demonstrates that there are efficient ways to transfer energy between the ocean and ice” (Hansen 2009: 83). The conclusion, as we have already seen, is that the IPCC models are wrong when they exclude, because they are considered very slow, feedbacks that can instead be sufficiently fast: Disappearing ice shelves, ice stream dynamics, and iceberg melting were not included in global climate models used for IPCC studies. This failure to take into account the increased discharge of icebergs to the ocean, where they melt much more rapidly than they would if they had remained as an ice block on the land, probably explains the models’ inability to predict realistic sea level change. (Hansen 2009: 84)

At this point we can interrupt my account of the climate change debate to recall one of the founders of pragmatism, William James, regarding the difference between ‘seeking the truth’ and ‘avoiding the error’. These are two cognitive purposes that should be carefully distinguished. It is worth quoting the whole passage: There are two ways of looking at our duty in the matter of opinion – ways entirely different and yet ways about whose difference the theory of knowledge seems hitherto to have shown very little concern. We must know the truth; and we must avoid error,  these are our first and great commandments as would-be knowers; but they are not two ways of stating an identical commandment, they are two separable laws. [. . .] Believe truth! Shun error! These, we see, are two materially different laws; and by choosing between them we may end by coloring differently our whole intellectual life. We may regard the chase for truth as paramount, and the avoidance of error as secondary; or we may, on the other hand, treat the avoidance of error as more imperative, and let the truth take its chance (James 1896: 17–18).

In James’s perspective, the duty of ‘avoiding error’ represents the sceptical spirit of a great deal of scientific research, which recognises beliefs only if they are sufficiently solid, acceptable beyond any reasonable doubt. In opposition to this is the duty of accepting as true beliefs those not fully supported by evidence, duty justified by ‘passionate’ motives. These are two different purposes, which depend on moral decisions. The two attitudes well illustrate the differences between Lovelock and Hansen, on the one hand, and the IPCC on the other. Lovelock and Hansen feel that it is wrong to rely on models that use a restrictive definition of climate sensitivity. For Hansen, although the observations on Paleolithic climate do not indisputably substantiate his argument, they still give him sufficient plausibility that it would be a serious mistake to ignore them. Insistence on the need to effectively exercise our critical scepticism towards theories could in fact have disastrous consequences. IPCC researchers follow a different strategy, more in line with the accepted scientific approach. According to this approach, we must only accept hypotheses that have overcome all possible sceptical criticisms. Being extremely rigid about a theory before accepting it, at least provisionally, is in fact intrinsic in the scientific spirit. Hansen agrees that the traditional scientific approach has its merit, but he considers it inappropriate in the context of climate change theories: “reticence [to accept a hypothesis] may be a consequence of the scientific method – success in science

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depends on continuous objective scepticism. Caution has its merits, but we can live up to our reticence if it serves to help lock in future disasters” (Hansen 2009: 87. Hansen 2007). It should be obvious how this has brought us back to the essence of the problem raised by Rudner and Churchman. Let us focus on the philosophical moral that we must take from the discussion on the hypothesis advocated by the IPCC. Before examining the degree of probability that evidence gives the hypothesis being debated, we must decide which facts constitute the evidence with which to evaluate the empirical support of the theory. The latter point concerns the relevance of some facts and the irrelevance of others. Only the relevant facts speak for or against the truth of a theory and therefore only and all these facts come under empirical evidence. Thus, the issue of relevance concerns the choice of appropriate empirical evidence, and should be carefully distinguished from the problem of evaluating the correct probability of a hypothesis given the empirical evidence considered appropriate. The limit of Rudner’s critics is that they focus on the second question, while disregarding the first. Once this has been clarified, Rudner’s theory is basically substantiated. In fact, we again find the entanglement between the epistemic and the moral already in the selection of relevant facts, since the same choice of these facts constitutes a morally relevant decision in the evaluation of risk. Let’s call the hypothesis H and the empirical evidence e. As Cartwright notes (Cartwright 2008; Cartwright and Hardie 2012), the evaluation of greater or lesser probability is not a logical dyadic relation between H and e, but a triadic one: the probability of H under the assumption A that in e all the relevant facts have been included in order to assess the probability that H is true. Assumption A is the ‘conceptual framework’ or ‘viewpoint’ needed to make the selection of empirical data. This kind of relevance is different from the probabilistic relevance which students generally focus on. In its simpler and more intuitive formulation, it is argued that evidence e is relevant for hypothesis H when e brings about changes in the probability of H (the probability of H/e is different from the probability of H ). This definition of relevance is not very significant when scientists have to concretely address the problems their research poses. Scientists are obviously well aware that they must include in the evidence all the facts related to the probability of H. What they do not know or what they are in disagreement over is what these facts are (cf. Cartwright 2008).15

15

For this reason, it would be unwise to assume as obvious the requirement of total evidence, which states that the probability of a hypothesis depends on all the facts or data related to the truth of the hypothesis. However important, the requirement does not give precise indications as to which facts are to be considered relevant. We could, for example, consider relevant all the known facts or all the knowable facts, or all the knowable facts within a reasonable period of time (and how do we evaluate their reasonableness?), or still all the facts obtainable at a reasonable cost (and how do we evaluate the reasonableness of the cost?). The requirement of total evidence satisfies the logic, but not the philosopher interested in understanding the process of scientific research. On this topic, I had several long discussions with Eleonora Montuschi. I wish to thank Eleonora for pointing me to Cartwright’s essay.

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Following the example of the hypotheses of climate change, we can clearly understand the nature of these assumptions. They are conceptual frameworks that tell us what facts are relevant because they are causally related to the states of things established by the hypothesis (cf. Achistein 1983, Chapter 10).16 Some facts are clearly relevant (there is no doubt about the direct impact of carbon dioxide on the temperature of our planet), others are clearly irrelevant (the astral position of the planets, for example). The most interesting cases are those found in controversial cases. Different conceptual frameworks are involved here. When the hypothesis of climatic warming within this century is to be evaluated, for the IPCC scientists some facts are not relevant because they result in feedback that is too slow. Hansen and Lovelock have a different opinion. In the next section, we will return to questions of a predominantly analytic nature. What has already been said is sufficient to evaluate Betz’s proposal, which he considers justified according to the procedure used by the IPCC scientists. Betz’s strategy avoids using the analytical methods of classical statistics, which requires the choice, with moral implications, between the risk of accepting a false hypothesis and the risk of rejecting a true hypothesis by objective estimates of probability. However, the choice described in the extract above by James is independent of the statistical theory adopted. As Hansen notes, scientific method demands that we ‘avoid error’, resorting to massive amounts of scepticism regarding the reality of climate warming. The implication of this is that the empirical evidence consists of only sufficiently fast positive and negative feedbacks, the relevance of which is accepted by all, beyond any reasonable doubt. On the contrary, giving credence to hypotheses that are not supported by conclusive evidence (James would say that they are supported on ‘passionate’ grounds) leads to the strategy of adopting a wider meaning of ‘climate sensitivity‘, which also includes the slower feedbacks, the importance of which is up for discussion. I have previously said that the dilemma proposed by James is completely independent of the choice of a statistical theory. Now we can appreciate how the same weakening strategy is by no means morally neutral since, according to James’s terminology, it is exactly the same as the obligation to ‘avoid error’ until we attain beliefs that are acceptable beyond any reasonable doubt. Betz’s strategy, then, retains the moral and philosophical dilemma that James drew attention to, choosing the first of the two horns of the dilemma, the one that requires us to approve only the theories that are acceptable beyond any reasonable sceptical doubt. Given the issues at stake, both Hansen and Lovelock believe, on the contrary, that it is only right to give ‘some chance to the truth’ to hypotheses that see climate change as a more dramatic reality than what is commonly believed.

16

Achistein’s analysis focuses on the more general notion of explanatory connection. There is no need for relevant facts to be causally connected to the states of things established by the hypothesis. Some facts might be relevant for different reasons. I have mentioned causal relationships because they are related to the case-studies I examine. My general thesis is that we need conceptual frameworks to connect the hypotheses under scrutiny with empirical data.

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Even though I consider it rather pedantic, it is perhaps useful to specify the problem by referring back to the hypotheses H and H*, we started off with. By accepting the ‘duty to avoid error’, IPCC scientists are very exacting when dealing with the reality of climate warming. Consequently, they believe that by assuming a certain level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, hypothesis H ‘Earth’s temperature will rise by more than 2 degrees by 2100’17 should be subjected to a strict sceptical examination, considering only the sufficiently fast positive and negative feedbacks, whose relevance to the hypothesis is proven beyond any reasonable doubt. By collecting empirical evidence in this way, they accept hypothesis H*: ‘H is unlikely’. For Hansen and Lovelock, this decision is unjustified because it is dangerous. They accept ‘the duty to give some chance to the truth’ and consequently support the possibility of including feedbacks of debatable relevance into the meaning of climate sensitivity. Therefore, they accept hypothesis H*: assuming a certain level of greenhouse gases present in the atmosphere, ‘H is sufficiently likely’. The difference in the evaluation is based on both moral and epistemic reasons. To sum up, the theories proposed by Hansen, Lovelock and the IPCC incorporate, in the very definition of which facts are relevant, decisions that have consequences of a clearly moral nature. If we side with Lovelock, we should actually begin to set up the few parts of the Earth that will still be hospitable after the catastrophe (Hansen, in this, seems less pessimistic: his ‘alternative scenario’ does not entail such serious consequences). If, on the other hand, we go with the consensus represented by the IPCC, we could limit ourselves to reducing carbon dioxide emissions by at least 40% by the middle of the century.18 At the end of the discussion, it is interesting to note that here, though in the different context of inductive risk, we find the issue addressed in the previous chapter: the empirical meaning of scientific terms itself sometimes conceals a moral evaluation. In the case of the controversy of climate change, moral choice is in fact already present in the way in which the data available are selected to determine the empirical meaning of ‘climatic sensitivity’, since the acceptance or rejection of hypotheses about the level of global warming, given certain scenarios, depends crucially on how this concept is defined. Just as for terms such as ‘biodiversity‘and ‘well-being’, the empirical meaning of a term depends on the use we want to make of it in the light of resolving morally significant problems. In inductive risk analysis, we find further confirmation of how scientific language is a kind of technology.

17

The date is a representative simplification of the wide range of IPCC forecasts, which vary according to different scenarios, each of which is characterised by different levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. 18 Perhaps it should be added that the question would not be solved simply by waiting for an agreed solution through the collection of a sufficient amount of empirical data that tells us which meaning of ‘climate sensitivity’ is the right one. This too is a decision that has consequences, above all highly debatable ones, in the case of global warming. It should not be surprising that all the arguments of the ‘negationists’ in the end boil down to underlining the excessive uncertainty which, in their opinion, characterises all the predictions relative to climate change; uncertainty that would suggest that it may be better to wait before making socially expensive and challenging decisions.

3.3 Scientific Consensus, Values and Bayes

3.3

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Scientific Consensus, Values and Bayes

In criticising Rudner and Churchman, advocates of the weakening strategy dispense with classical statistics. This type of statistics, let us remind ourselves once again, requires the scientist to specify, by means of objective probability estimates, the risk of accepting a false hypothesis or rejecting a true hypothesis. Instead of classic statistics, those who support the strategy have another type of statistics in mind: Bayesian statistics, which, from this point of view, has very different characteristics. In fact, Bayesian statistics only requires a subjective estimation of probability based on the best available evidence. The term ‘subjective’ could be misleading, however, to clarify, it refers to estimates that derive from the prior knowledge of the subject who is called upon to express them and that characterises him or her as a scientist.19 Jeffrey surely had Bayesian statistics in mind when he wrote his essay in response to Rudner. What I would like to highlight now is a matter that is largely implicit in what has been said so far: the weakening strategy proposed by Betz assumes that the scientific community should act as a single evaluator.20 Besides not supporting the moral neutrality of science (it is a choice that in itself has moral implications), it is an assumption so counterfactual as to be heroic: the scientific community is often very fragmented and informed judgments may also vary considerably.21 Let us explore what happens if we drop the assumption that the scientific community acts as a single evaluator (something I believe is even obvious). If the assumption is dropped, it clearly follows that Bayesian statistics does not provide an answer to the problem raised by Rudner and Churchman. On the contrary, we must conclude that the Bayesian approach further supports the argument that moral values are inevitably present in the way hypotheses are confirmed. The problem arises from the diversity of prior probabilities.

19

Bayesian statistics has given rise to an influential philosophical research programme. For example, see Earman (1992), Bovens and Hartmann (2003), Howson and Urbach (2005). Press and Tanur (2001) outline the philosophy of Bayesian science using a very wide range of historical cases. 20 With regards to climate change models, on this subject see also Parker (2011). Parker focuses on the likelihood of a hypothesis, Pr(e, H ), where the evidence is given by the fact that all the models examined agree that H is true. I will not deal with this problem, although later I will say something about likelihood. 21 In the case of the hypothesis of global warming, a further problem is added to it. No researcher is individually able to give an informed judgment on all the assumptions present in a single model of climate change. As Winsberg (2012: 127) writes: “Climate models reflect the work of hundreds of researchers working in different physical locations and at different times. They combine incredibly diverse kinds of expertise, including climatology, meteorology, atmospheric dynamics, atmospheric physics, atmospheric chemistry, solar physics, historical climatology, geophysics, geochemistry, geology, soil science, oceanography, glaciology, paleoclimatology, ecology, biogeography, biochemistry, computer science, mathematical and numerical modeling, time series analysis, and so forth. [. . .] No single person, indeed no group of people in any one place, at one time, or from any one field of expertise, is in a position to speak authoritatively about any AOGCM [atmosphereocean global climate model] in its entirety [. . .]”.

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Let us start by looking at the well-known Bayes theorem. This theorem (in reality, it is almost a definition because it derives from the axioms of probability calculus in a very direct way) affirms the following relation: PrðH; eÞ ¼

PrðH ÞPrðe; H Þ PrðeÞ

where Pr(H, e) is posterior probability, i.e., the probability of H in the light of the new evidence e; Pr(H) is the prior probability of H, i.e., the probability of H before we get new evidence; Pr(e, H) is the likelihood of hypothesis H (i.e., the probability of the evidence assuming that H is true); finally, Pr(e) is the probability of the evidence, attributed only on the basis of our general knowledge.22 It is obvious – just from looking at the formula – that the posterior probability of a hypothesis depends on its prior probability. The dependence of the posterior probability on the prior probability can easily be grasped by examining an extreme case, that of a dogmatic scientist, where the prior probability of the hypothesis is zero. In this case, the posterior probability of the hypothesis will remain zero, regardless of the empirical evidence collected! We may argue, and with good reason, that the position of the dogmatic scientist is not acceptable, and therefore reject it as irrational. However, it is not necessary to resort to such extreme cases. The key point is that if different values play a role in the way prior probabilities are attributed to a hypothesis (before gathering new empirical evidence) then they also have a role in the way the posterior probability is determined (after an experiment or the gathering of new evidence). This is an elementary consequence of Bayes theorem. Scientific controversies do not arise (at least, not necessarily) from the fact that some researchers are not sufficiently competent or sufficiently honest. They arise because they have different values, both epistemic and moral. If these affect the way scientists choose the prior probabilities of a hypothesis, then they inevitably affect the context of justification, that is, the way each scientist learns from experience by gathering new observational or experimental evidence. The point is well clarified by Philip Kitcher (2011: 33–4) in one of his books on the relationship between science and democracy. He writes: According to the most widely accepted formal account of scientific evidence, the probability assigned to a hypothesis depends essentially on the prior probability of that hypothesis [. . .] – and the choice of prior probability is subject to no constraint except that they should be strictly between 0 and 1. Prior probabilities chosen at whim of the investigator can be influenced by any type of value, with impunity, so the ideal of ‘value-free justification’ lapses.

It is hard not to agree with this conclusion, which comes directly from the admission that in the scientific community there is often no consensus to act as if there were only one evaluator.

22

I have used a simple version of the theorem that does not show alternative hypotheses.

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Occasionally, Betz speaks of the ‘frank’ and honest scientist, ready to admit the state of ignorance of science. One could imagine that each scientist honestly admits that their theory incorporates assumptions that are not shared by other researchers, also specifying what the characteristics of these assumptions are. Researchers should honestly communicate them to the decision-maker and, if everyone is frank and honest, the whole scientific community will be frank and honest. It will then be up to the decision-maker to evaluate what to do. However, this kind of honesty is not the same as the weakening strategy, which requires the whole scientific community to agree, even informally, on the margin of uncertainty. In addition, this form of honesty, while highly recommendable, accepts precisely the point under discussion: once the different initial assumptions are specified, using the Bayes theorem it becomes immediately apparent that these assumptions influence the way in which each scientist confirms their own theory. This is the teaching of the Bayesian model of learning from experience. It must be recognised that the Bayesian theory reveals strict limits if it is seen as a way to understand the processes of scientific research. From this point of view, its importance has been greatly exaggerated by many philosophers. Just as in the case of classical statistics, the relevance of the theory is related to the statistical tests, in which it has an undeniable and obvious utility (an example is the case proposed by Rudner of the quality control of a machine that produces buckles). However, no one is able to calculate the likelihood of Darwin’s theory of evolution or Einstein’s theory of relativity. The methods of Bayesian statistics provide, at most, an analogy with the methods of scientific research, and this analogy goes against, not in favour of, the ideal of value-free science. Nonetheless, we will continue to follow the analogy between scientific method and Bayesian statistics. The extreme subjectivity with which the prior probability of a hypothesis is chosen does not mean that the gathering of facts is irrelevant. On the contrary, for Bayesians only by a proper and careful gathering of facts can we learn from experience. As empirical evidence accumulates, the diverse prior probabilities are modified by constant applications of the Bayes theorem. Eventually, though initially divergent, the probabilities will tend to converge towards a single ultimate probability. For Bayesians, this shows how the gathering of facts generates consensus in science. In an old textbook on Bayesian statistics, dedicated to social scientists, I found, without too much effort, this view so nicely expressed as follows: It is this feature of Bayes’ theorem that saves Bayesian statistics from being wholly subjective. Initially subjective opinion is brought into contact with data through the operation of Bayes’ theorem, and with enough data differing prior opinions are made to converge. This comes about because the prior opinions become less and less relevant to posterior opinion as more and more data are observed. Prior opinion is swamped out by the data, so that posterior opinion is controlled solely by the data. For a Bayesian, this is the only way in which data can ‘speak for themselves’ (Phillips 1973: 78).

Commenting on this statement, it should be stressed that, in reality, the Bayesian approach alone does not explain how consensus in science is reached. In fact, Bayesian statistics explains the convergence only because of very strong and unrealistic assumptions if applied to scientific research (cf. Earman 1992).

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However, the question I am most interested in is another, although it is related to the alleged convergence of the different opinions guaranteed by the application of Bayes theorem. By continuing the analogy between Bayesian learning and learning in science, the convergence of the prior probabilities is not necessarily equivalent to a convergence of the initial values. For the empiricist, especially, it would be paradoxical to support such an interpretation of Bayesian statistics, given the empiricist’s faith in the rigid dichotomy between facts and values. This point has been clearly explained by Thomas Kuhn (1977: 329): What converges as the evidence changes over time need only be the value p that individuals compute from their individual algorithms. Conceivably those algorithms themselves also become more alike with time, but the ultimately unanimity of theory choice provides no evidence whatsoever that they do so. If subjective factors are required to account for the decisions that initially divide the profession, they may still be present later when the profession agrees. Though I shall not here argue the point, consideration of the occasions on which a scientific community divides suggests that they actually do so.

Kuhn focuses his attention on cognitive or epistemic values, but it should be clear that equal consideration also applies to moral values. If we closely follow the analogy between scientific processes and the Bayesian model, the conclusion we must draw is not the inevitability of the consensus of science, but the persistence of disagreement even where there is apparent unanimous consensus. I think that with this we can conclude the analysis of the weakening strategy. This strategy requires evaluations for which there is scientific consensus beyond any reasonable doubt. We have seen how the choice of following this strategy is not morally neutral, since it translates into the moral decision to give particular importance to the sceptical doubt. In addition, the search for consensus is artificial. There is nothing that testifies to its plausibility. Furthermore, Bayesian statistics does not support morally neutral science; on the contrary, it shows how scientists learn differently from experience, giving different weight to the empirical evidence used in new controls. The above reinforces Putnam’s conclusions with regard to scientific undertaking in general. Until now, we have been concerned with the consensus on a specific theory, but if we extend our vision to science as it is broadly understood, it is easy to find a wide variety of approaches behind the apparent consensus that exists in the scientific community as such. As Putnam writes (Putnam 1994: 471–2): I have to ask why on earth we should expect the sciences to have more than a family resemblance to one another? They all share a common heritage, in that they owe allegiance to a minimum of empiricism (they ‘put questions to Nature’; they are conducted in a fallibilistic spirit; and so on); they frequently depend on very careful observation and/or experimentation (think of the amount of data that evolutionary biologists have collected!); and they interact with other disciplines recognized to be ‘sciences’. But there is no set of ‘essential’ properties that all the sciences have in common.

Therefore, we must not overstate the existence of a consensus in science. Behind the apparent consensus there is a pluralism of different positions. Empiricism

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envisages the relationship between science and society as if they were two distinct and opposing blocks: the first – science – all based on facts and theories; the second – society – characterised by personal values, passions and options. When we address the relationship between science and democracy in more detail, we will see the way in which it is argued that science and democracy belong to a single community of inquiry, to use Dewey’s words, characterised by a pluralism of viewpoints where parts of the scientific community can join forces with parts of society through a system of fortuitous ‘alliances’ in continuous change.

3.4

Constructivist Concepts of Risk

The traditional epistemological position states that the objectivity of research is incompatible with the view that moral values play a role in science. There are two variants of the traditional standpoint. Until now, I have criticised those who claim that research is objective because it is value-free. However, something remains to be said about those who believe, on the other hand, that science is not objective precisely because it is laden with moral values. This is, as has been said, the other side of the coin of the same assumption. In the next two sections, we will examine the philosophy of risk proposed by the constructivists, according to which science does not provide an objective explanation of the facts. Against constructivism we will use the same conceptual apparatus used against the advocates of the ideal of value-free science, which is an unmistakable sign that pragmatism offers a genuine third point of view, conceptually independent of both positions. We will begin with some historical remarks that explain the origin of constructivist theories in the sociology and philosophy of risk. In the 1970s and 1980s, many scientists were startled at the hostility of public opinion towards scientific and technological research. For these scientists, it was obvious that risk assessment was a matter pertaining exclusively to the experts, the only people able to study it objectively being a neutral scientific undertaking. If public opinion disagreed with their evaluations, this was due to incomplete information or irrational beliefs. The obvious remedy was to bridge the information deficit in public opinion. Scientists had to abandon the rarefied world of academies and laboratories to take up the task of disseminating scientific information in a correct and effective way. This conviction led to the setting up of the project called Public Understanding of Science (cf. Bodmer 1985). Although a more widespread propagation of scientific culture is desirable, this idea has proved to be very naive indeed. It assumes, for example, that experts are able to offer a unanimous evaluation, while all of us see how in many crucial issues – from the sustainability of economic development to global warming – there is no

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shortage of bitter dissent.23 This has opened up the road to a very radical ‘antithesis’, as outlined by the cultural theory of risk. According to this theory, risk is a social construction and its assumed objectivity is just an illusion. If, in the usual approach, the facts are and must be established irrespective of moral values, which as such can only distort the correct scientific risk analysis, for the constructivists the facts almost disappear, as they would not be able to offer an objective basis from which to learn in an attempt to improve our knowledge. Using precise sociological categories, as we will see, it is argued that different social groups with divergent images of nature and differently organised, also perceive different risks. Consequently, it would be pointless to strive to seek a common and objective touchstone. In risk assessment, a distinction should be made between three different conceptual phases. In the first place, it is necessary to identify a problem, that is, to identify a situation as risky; secondly, an assessment must be made of the level of risk associated with that situation; thirdly, the acceptability of the estimated risk needs to be studied by measuring its social advantages and disadvantages (cf. ShraderFrechette 1991: 5). The cultural theory of risk claims that all three stages are laden with moral values and therefore are not objective. In this section, as in the previous ones, I will focus mainly on the second stage, relating to risk assessment, only briefly referring to the first, when the cultural theory of risk is outlined. Against the cultural risk theory I will argue, as I have just said, that risk assessment is a process that is both value-laden and objective at the same time. To support such a statement, we will see why, and with what meaning, it is possible in this context to speak of cognitive progress. More specifically, we will see that there are good reasons to accept part of the cultural theory of risk, the part that emphasises the importance of conceptual frameworks. However, we will also see how the existence of conceptual frameworks does not exclude talking of objectivity. Instead, we should say that different conceptual frameworks focus on different aspects of the same reality, allowing and even encouraging cognitive progress in risk assessment. Let us begin by looking more closely at some claims of the cultural theory of risk. For Cultural Theory, risk is only “a collective construct” (Douglas and Wildavsky 1983: 186 ff.). The people involved in a debate on the dangers of technological innovation “see things differently and know things differently” and so ‘they will inevitably be operating with different definitions of what is there” (Schwarz and Thompson 1990: 33). For those who support this theory, “the perception of risks is social,” deep-rooted in specific forms of life and, it should be stressed, “any form of life can be justified” (Douglas and Wildavsky 1983: 61 and 188). To defend these assertions, it is not necessary to deny the obvious consideration that “the world [cannot] be any way we want it to be” (Schwarz and Thompson 1990: 11), nor state that “the perils of nuclear wastes and carcinogenic chemicals are [. . .] 23

Moreover, it has been seen that risk acceptance is inextricably linked to ethical factors. For example, there is a reasonable difference between whether the risk control is shared or not, or whether the risk is the result of a voluntary decision or if it has been accepted unintentionally, or even if it is believed that its distribution among the population follows or does not follow morally shared criteria.

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figments of the imagination” (Douglas and Wildavsky 1983: 1–2). At times, critics appear to be mean in attributing statements to Cultural Theory that are so counterintuitive as to seem absurd.24 Cultural Theory comes to the conclusion that the risks are social constructs, stating that no empirical or factual data can ever force us to abandon a conceptual framework or form of life. This is why advocates of the cultural theory of risk claim that people ‘live in different realities’: every individual lives in a different reality because everyone builds the facts according to their own conceptual framework. For example, “the water in fourteenth century Europe was a persistent health hazard, but a cultural theory of perception would point out that it became a public preoccupation only when it seemed plausible to accuse Jews of poisoning the wells” (Douglas and Wildavsky 1983: 7). Furthermore, there is a second order of consideration, which closely concerns risk and uncertainty. In using technologies, especially new ones, there are often margins of uncertainty about their reliability. However, at least in some cases, it is possible to establish a consensus on the degree of uncertainty we are faced with and, in the long term, we may be confident that the degree of uncertainty will gradually diminish. Instead in other cases, there is no consensus in estimating uncertainty. In other words, “The available data [. . .] do not suggest a single credible and unequivocal picture of what is going on” and consequently “the debates [. . .] are characterized by contradictory certainties [and] are essentially untunable” (Schwarz and Thompson 1990: 141). It is in these cases that empirical evidence cannot determine the choice between different competing opinions. Experts think they are quarreling over tables, numbers, and facts, while sociological analysis reveals that the disagreement is actually rooted in incompatible value options. Schwarz and Thompson (1990: 85 ff.) cite the case of the debate on the possibilities of technological innovation faced with the limits of natural resources.25 For some, the current economic trend is entirely sustainable. For others, the current trend is not sustainable and has to reach sustainable development through an orderly transition. For others still, we are rapidly approaching a dramatic situation and we need to drastically reduce the use of natural resources. In this field, scientists do not agree on the degree of uncertainty granted by the evidence available. Another philosophically interesting case, studied very thoroughly by John Adams (1995, particularly Chapters 7 and 8), concerns the debate on the legislation regulating the use of seat belts. Initially, those in favour of their compulsory use referred to the extensive experimental evidence that demonstrated how, in the case of an accident, people who wear their belts had more chance of being saved. Those who were opposed to it, however, argued against it by referring to the importance of a possible risk compensation effect: feeling more secure when belted, drivers tend to

Cfr. Shrader-Frechette (1991: 30): “Constructs don’t kill people; faulty reactors, improperly stored toxics, and poor risk evaluations do. At least some hazards are real, and many of these are measurable. Hence, the cultural relativists are wrong in overemphasizing value judgements in risk assessment and evaluation. Risk evaluations assess real hazards, not just constructs”. 25 The same issue has been studied by Douglas (1992), Chapter 14. 24

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drive less carefully, putting pedestrians and cyclists in situations of higher risk. In a similar way to the debate on the limits to growth, in this case too the statistics show great uncertainty; and also in this case rather than decreasing as time passed, the uncertainty was replaced by unshakeable and incompatible certainties.26 Philosophers of science quickly recognise in these case-studies problems that are already very familiar to them, such as the incommensurability of theories and the value-ladenness of observations. It is no coincidence that in the discussions on the cultural theory of risk, it is often mentioned that sociologists of science have resumed and further studied these issues. It would not be wrong to say that the cultural theory of risk explores and re-works issues already developed elsewhere.27 This is not to deny its originality. The cultural theory of risk does not just apply well-known theses, which have contributed to the birth of constructivism. Based on Mary Douglas’s research, the theory also explains why different social groups adopt different conceptual frameworks or myths of nature, which in turn are responsible for the difficulty or, rather, the impossibility, to speak of perceptions that are not laden with value assumptions right from the start. The theory identifies four social archetypes, which correspond to four different concepts of nature (cf. Douglas 1992, 1996; see also Douglas 1982). Those belonging to a hierarchical structure believe that nature is, at least in part, predictable and manageable with adequate knowledge and managerial skills. The individualists believe that nature is sufficiently elastic and robust, so as to recover its equilibrium through appropriate market signals. The egalitarians, on the contrary, believe that nature is extremely fragile: even minimal disturbances represent potential threats. Finally, the fatalists portray nature as temperamental and unpredictable. The above-mentioned cases well illustrate how the constructivist theory works. Individualists believe in the robustness of nature and do not consider it necessary to resort to regulations. Hierarchically organised structures, starting with governmental associations have a different approach, trying to solve problems with a managerial spirit. Looking back at the previous examples, we can see that they are in favour of regulations both in the field of development and in the issue of seat belts. Egalitarians seek new development models and are always ready to support those people who are less protected socially (in the case of seat belts, pedestrians and cyclists). The conclusion we must draw is that it is unrealistic to try to objectively determine the degree or level of risk that technologies pose, not to mention their acceptability. From the alleged value-ladenness of empirical data, the non-objectivity of risk

26

According to Adams’ reconstruction, the advocates of the compulsory wearing of seat belts won the match thanks to the cultural and political climate that was favourable towards it. 27 Obviously, as far as philosophers are concerned, I am referring mainly to P. Feyerabend and T. Kuhn. The sociologists of science frequently cited are B. Latour, K. Knorr-Cetina, B. Barnes, S. Shapin, and others. The philosophers of science have long been preoccupied with the theory of incommensurability, and I cannot try to summarise the debate here. However, in Barrotta (1998), in the first three chapters, I tried to show at greater length the limits of constructivism, at least in the most radical version, which is adopted by the cultural theory of risk.

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assessment ensues. Any measurement is inevitably laden with ‘pre-judgments’, i.e., conceptual frameworks that were already in place before the facts were collected. It should be noted that, at the end of this brief overview of the typology proposed by Cultural Theory, the four groups are not identified in an arbitrary or empirical way, since they emerge from a grid consisting of the intersection of two axes, one representing the degree of external coercion on individual choices and the other showing the degree of cohesion of the reference group. There is undoubtedly some ‘family resemblance’ between the points I have argued earlier and the cultural theory of risk. I had already shown the role of conceptual frameworks using the examples of chlorofluorocarbons and, above all, of theories on climate change. Thanks to these examples we have seen that it is impossible to do without conceptual frameworks that tell us which potential effects to check, among the infinite possibilities. Our conceptual framework may turn out to be too narrow, with the result that it excludes potential dangers, or may be excessively wide, accentuating the risk unnecessarily and wasting time and resources on the verification of factors of little or no importance. There are no precise rules to determine where to draw the line. In this context, there is inevitably a certain amount of space for personal judgement on the part of researchers and it is certainly possible that moral values find their way into these judgements on the estimation of risk. Nevertheless, I believe that the cultural theory of risk is untenable. In fact, it equivocates the role of values and conceptual frameworks in risk analysis. Once the misunderstanding has been dispelled we will see why it is wrong to deny the objectivity of risk assessments. The main problem of constructivist theory of risk lies in its implicit connection with the incommensurability of theories and the valueladenness of perceptions. The argument of incommensurability is not sustainable and in any case, more importantly, it is very misleading in the context of risk analysis. Let us start from an example, which per se does not directly concern risk analysis and is so simple as to seem philosophically uncontroversial. Two detectives arrive at a crime scene and find that the weapon used for the murder is a dagger. The first observes that the dagger has a particular shape, which cannot be found in the usual commercial channels. Therefore, his suspicions fall on a certain Charles, who is a collector of daggers, and an acquaintance of the deceased. The second sees that it is a military dagger, and so he suspects Gabriel, who until recently had been in the army. The two detectives adopt different hypotheses and they both feel that the evidence available supports their hypothesis. However, we should not say, as Schwarz and Thompson do, that the two detectives see different things; we should rather say they see different characteristics of the same identical thing: a dagger. Constructivism would argue that the concept of ‘dagger’ is also a social construct that depends on conceptual frameworks. Nonetheless, this granted, it is still a conceptual framework shared by both detectives, who have no doubt examining the same object – the dagger found on the scene of the crime – that is, an entity with specific characteristics of use and physical properties. The point raised here is fundamental. Since the two detectives see the same object, this allows them to experience shared cognitive progress with the discovery of new and unexpected features of the object, which

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may also be relevant to solve the case. It makes sense that progress is possible even if a definitive solution is not reached. The discovery of new relevant elements is in itself already a step forward.28 The same analysis seems to be correct when we switch to analysing scientific controversies where, unlike the example, values play an obvious role. Even in this case, but only for the time being, we will ignore the specific problems posed by the risk analysis. In 1774 and 1783, Joseph Priestley, chemist and theologian, conducted two experiments that seemed to convincingly demonstrate the correctness of the Phlogiston theory. Surprisingly, Antoine Lavoisier used these same experiments to support the theory of oxygen, which would replace the phlogiston theory a short time later. However, it is very misleading to say that Priestley and Lavoisier saw different things. We should instead say that they focused on different characteristics of the same experiments. For Lavoisier, the key aspect was weight analysis; for Priestley, volumetric analysis. Clearly, two different conceptual frameworks were involved. On the one hand, Lavoisier was pursuing a chemical analysis on the ideal model offered by physics; on the other, Priestley was referring to a well-structured philosophy of matter, in keeping with his theological principles. However, they were both referring to the same conceptual framework they were given by the emergence of pneumatic chemistry: all chemists at the time agreed that the atmospheric air was not a simple element (with no more than ‘impurities’ in it) but a mixture of chemically different gases, whose characteristics had to be discovered and analysed. Not only did the difference in conceptual frameworks not hamper cognitive progress, it even facilitated it. In fact, the different conceptual frameworks enabled the identification of new properties of a shared reality (the existence of different gases, established by the birth of pneumatic chemistry), thus improving the general understanding of chemical processes. It is no coincidence that, though not convinced, Priestley was able to make insightful and fruitful criticisms, which led to important changes even in the theory proposed by Lavoisier (cf. Barrotta 2000). The necessarily selective character of every observation is evident. John Dewey (1938: 127) emphasised it by stating the difference between pointing out and pointing at: The discriminative or differential aspect of the demonstrative act and its singular object is suggested in ordinary speech by the expression ‘pointing out’. It is impossible merely to point at something. For anything or everything in the line of vision or gesture may be equally pointed at. The act of pointing is wholly indeterminate as to its object. It is not selective within a situation, because it is not controlled by the problem which the situation sets and the necessity for determining the conditions which then point to the way in which it shall be resolved.

28

I discussed the idea of progress without consensus in Barrotta (1998). As I have already pointed out, in this work there is a more thorough criticism of constructivism and, in particular its connection with the theory of the incommensurability of scientific theories.

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In this extract, Dewey emphasises how the selection of specific aspects of reality is guided by the point of view of the individual researcher. However, Dewey does not mean to suggest that the collection of facts is unimportant for theory testing, quite the opposite. In the quest to find solutions to problems, what Dewey calls warranted assertions, no one can avoid learning from experience through their careful gathering. Let us now leave aside the fictitious examples and those taken from the history of science and return to risk and its estimation. These examples were not an unnecessary digression. To counter the theory of incommensurability, the examples given illustrate why a shared reality – linguistically expressed – still persists in controversies, which allows us to continue to sustain the possibility of cognitive progress. The theory of incommensurability leads to insurmountable difficulties and is largely discredited today.29 Furthermore, and this is the point that I most want to make, to try to base risk analysis on incommensurability is misleading because it results in misunderstanding the role of values and conceptual frameworks, coming up with paradoxical findings for any theory of risk. For constructivists, conceptual frameworks are forms of life that build different realities in a way that is not problem-free. In doing so, their analysis overlooks the consequences of adopting the wrong conceptual framework. This is a paradoxical aspect of the risk analysis proposed by the constructivists, because no risk analysis should disregard the study of the consequences of wrong choices. Insisting on the same reality only serves to emphasise the importance of undesirable consequences that may have wrong conceptual frameworks. Once the dubious connection with the theory of incommensurability has been removed, risk analysis simply tells us that different conceptual schemes lead to focusing on different aspects of the same reality, including phenomena in or excluding them from the evidence. In this way, they define the relevance of phenomena by connecting empirical data with hypotheses under examination. In this context, conceptual frameworks are certainly indispensable for risk assessment, but not, I repeat, because they construct different realities. As in the freon case, conceptual frameworks that are too narrow lead to the exclusion of possible causal chains, thus underestimating the risk of accepting the hypothesis (in our case, the safety of freon). Then again, we cannot control all the causal chains that might in principle be relevant. At some point we have to stop acquiring empirical data when deciding whether to accept or reject a hypothesis (as illustrated by the different empirical meaning of the concept of climate sensitivity and the ensuing discussion on the acceptability of hypotheses regarding the level of warming, given certain scenarios). In risk analysis, what matters is the different evaluation of the risk of error when accepting or rejecting a hypothesis. As we have seen since the beginning of the 29

The main problem of the incommensurability theory is that in order to be competitive two theories must offer logically incompatible explanations for the same phenomena. This objection was immediately raised and is repeated again and again. See Preston (1997). This objection had already been brought up by Kordig (1971). After The structure of scientific revolutions, Kuhn strove to find a more satisfactory version of the incommensurability theory (for example, see Gattei 2008).

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chapter, it is here that the entanglement between the epistemic and the moral takes place. And it is here that conceptual frameworks have a role, because they select the relevant empirical data when evaluating the hypothesis. To state it once again, the different conceptual frameworks do not construct unshared realities. What they determine is the empirical evidence, that is, the set of relevant facts or empirical data considered relevant. Seen in this way, conceptual frameworks do not lead to the affirmation that risk is a mere social construct. Nature is complex, unforeseen hazards are always possible, and the different points of view are essential to understand which aspects of reality are to be considered important. In any case, we are dealing with the same reality. And this makes it possible to learn from experience through mistakes and successes. Reality is understood with greater reliability as the facts are collected, albeit selected by using conceptual frameworks, in consideration of the problems that we have to solve. As we have done so far, it would be useful to illustrate what has been said through a detailed analysis of a historic case. It is one that has great importance in my country’s living memory and will enable us to look more closely at how the conceptual frameworks in risk assessment lead to focusing on different aspects of the same reality.

3.5

A Philosophical Lesson from the Vajont Dam Disaster

On 9th October, 1963, shortly after 22.30, a landslide of gigantic dimensions falls off Mount Toc, and plunges into the artificial lake of Vajont. The dam withstands the force of the impact, but a wave over 200 metres high floods the village of Longarone downstream. There are about two thousand victims. Almost a holocaust. The 261-metre-long dam, the largest arch dam in the world, a symbol of Italian engineering, turns into something very different. In fact, that day, to report what the newspapers of the time said, saw the beginning of a lawsuit against science and its ambiguous relationship with politics.30 Even today, there are different opinions on how we should assess this episode. The harshest accusation is probably the one written by the journalist Tina Merlin (2001), who had a leading role in the story, even before the disaster. For Merlin the truth was apparent at the very beginning. It was kept hidden because of the subservience of science to the political and economic power of the Adriatic Society of Electricity (SADE). Actually, as we will see, the incident seems more complex and, to better clarify its epistemological problems, it is advisable to bear in mind the

See Merlin (2001: 21): “It will remain a monument to the perennial shame of science and politics. A union that closely tied [. . .] almost all the illustrious academics to economic power”. See also Gervasoni (Gervasoni 1969: 2): “In all this, the engineers played the part not of protagonists, as it would be logical to expect, but of supporting actors”. 30

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legal truth which emerged from a very lengthy court case. According to the court ruling, criminal liability was limited to just a few months before the disaster, and therefore did not involve Carlo Semenza, the brilliant engineer who designed the dam and followed the work until October 1961, the year in which he died.31 The first feasibility studies of the dam date back to the 1920s. It was the geologist Dal Piaz, academic and close associate of Semenza, who recommended the abutment area of the dam, which was then actually chosen. It is important to note that the studies on the stability of the reservoir were limited to the abutment area and its hydraulic properties. Today, it may seem reckless to start a work of that size without a preliminary study on the inner constitution and resistance of the slopes of the valley, but at the time the efforts were all focused on the tremendous engineering problems rather than on the strictly geological ones (cf. E. Semenza 2005: 32 ff.; Carloni 1995: 13 ff.). In support of this approach, there was also the assumption that particular geological studies were not necessary in that area because the rock would have already revealed problems at surface level: “From a geological point of view – Semenza stated – the rock [of Veneto] is generally excellent [. . .]. On the whole, limestone is honest because it exposes its defects on the surface” (quoted in Gervasoni 1969:11). Undoubtedly, we can now conclude that this was an overly narrow ‘conceptual framework’, which greatly increased the risk inherent in building a dam of those dimensions. Contrary to Semenza’s expectations, the Vajont valley would unfortunately turn out to be of “an exceptionally unique nature” (E. Semenza 2005: 29). However, it is important to recognise that Semenza’s attitude at that time was neither unusual nor by any means criminal. The local people had a different consideration of the valley. Thanks to an intimate knowledge of the place, passed down through generations, they suspected that it was geologically fragile. In this case, the role of a small community, the heir to ancient local traditions, is clear. Constructivists love to talk about the knowledge of laypersons, as opposed to the expertise of official science. It is, however, a misleading juxtaposition. The locals were in possession of highly specialised knowledge accumulated over the years through a detailed observation of the places where they lived. It was, instead, knowledge that did not have formally certified qualifications.32 Merlin passionately defends their unexpressed knowledge, unformalised in scientific treatises. According to her testimony, right from the start, the inhabitants there

A summary of the findings of the Committees of inquiry of the criminal proceedings is in Carloni (1995, Chapter 6). For a different analysis, see Palmieri (1997). Palmieri’s account is strongly disputed by E. Semenza, see (Semenza 2005, Appendix C). 32 The temptation to contrast the knowledge of ‘ordinary people’ with the knowledge of official science is evident in Brian Wynne’s (1996) essay on sheep breeders in Cumbria, in the northwest of England. However, as we will see shortly, this overlooks the fact that science seeks to incorporate specific local knowledge. On this issue, I agree with Collins and Evans (2002: 42): “If those who are experts can have expertise, what special reference does expertise have? It might seem that anyone can be expert. We say that those referred to by some other analysts as ‘lay experts’ are just plain ‘experts’ – albeit their expertise has not been recognized by certification; crucially, they are nor spread throughout the population, but are found in small specialist groups”. 31

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had foreseen the tragedy that was to happen due to the filling and discharging processes of the basin (Merlin 2001: 73). Their entire historical memory led them to believe that the whole area was subject to landslides. This fact is also documented by Carloni (1995: 13) in his historical reconstruction of the disaster: “Monte Toc overlooking the left bank of the artificial basin standing at 1921 metres is a heavily tectonic limestone relief in which fractures and surface movements of the earth are visible.” Even the toponymy pointed to it: the name ‘Monte Toc’ comes from ‘patoc’ in the local dialect, which means ‘broken’ or ‘damaged’. Of course, it should be said that the fears of the inhabitants mainly concerned the town of Erto, located immediately above the dam. In their opinion, the town had been built on landslide-prone terrain. Although they possessed a more appropriate conceptual framework, they did not raise the problem that, with hindsight, would have turned out to be crucial. The SADE had actually carried out geological surveys on the place where the old town of Erto stood, and ruled out any danger. Despite the landslide, the town itself remained stable. However, it is significant that the SADE avoided doing what would have been advisable to do, given the concerns the local people had expressed: a detailed geological survey of all sides of the valley. The need to examine the geological features of the slopes of the valley emerged, however, not long after the start of the construction work. In March 1959, a landslide of about three million cubic metres happened on the nearby artificial lake of Pontesei, causing one death. For the locals this was a confirmation, for the SADE it was an alarm bell. The engineers were struck not only by the magnitude, but also by the compactness and speed of the landslide. Leopold Müller, an expert in geomechanics, was commissioned to make an inspection of the basin. Subsequently, he instructed a young geologist to conduct a more detailed study. As the irony of history would have it, this was Edoardo Semenza, the son of Carlo who designed the dam. It was Edoardo who discovered the existence of an ancient landslide of considerable size, and also suggested “that it could move again with the creation of the lake” (E. Semenza 2005: 60). Edoardo Semenza’s conclusions were not immediately accepted and, consequently, the risk continued to be underestimated. Edoardo himself explained the reason, which is also philosophically relevant. Geology at the time was not at all like a Kuhnian paradigm. There were different approaches, and in particular there were “differences in mentality and scientific preparation between geophysicists, all or almost all with a background in physics or mathematics, and geologists, whose experience is instead of a naturalistic bent, based mainly on the observations of the countryside” (E. Semenza 2005: 87). The events that followed, however, made Edoardo Semenza’s hypothesis more and more likely. As the reservoir filled up, cracks began to appear on the ground and landslide activity began to occur. The most important of these happened at the beginning of November 1960, when 700,000 cubic metres of rock material was displaced. It was a very small part of the overall mass that had started moving. Nevertheless, Carlo Semenza was still convinced that if he could not prevent the phenomenon, he might at least be able to control it. He constructed a diversion tunnel, in case the landslide split the valley in two, causing excessive rising in the level of water upstream. What is even more interesting, at

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least from our point of view, was the creation of a hydraulic model at Nove di Vittorio Veneto to study the possible consequences of the landslide. For the time, this was an extremely innovative move. Perhaps it could have been decisive in preventing the disaster. Instead, it actually proved to be damaging because of the misguided use Semenza’s successors made of it. As we well know, by definition a model represents a caricature of reality. Clearly, this choice of term should not be given a negative connotation. The word ‘caricature’ simply means that the reliability of the model should be carefully evaluated, by thoroughly examining the initial assumptions and hypotheses. For the former, gravel was used to simulate a landslide, although they knew that the landslip material was more compact. For the latter, a fall speed was calculated that was much less than the actual one would have been. With these premises, inevitably uncertain ones, the result was that there would not be any danger for a water capacity up to a maximum of 700 metres. From the tests performed on the model, Semenza’s successors only took the latter aspect and proceeded with filling the reservoir, even exceeding the maximum safety margin. With this, risk acceptance crossed the line into recklessness. We do not need to follow the chain of errors made in the months before the catastrophe. The lesson we must draw is clear. In dealing with the risk associated with the construction of a dam of exceptional dimensions, such as that of Vajont, different conceptual frameworks clashed with each other: the one adopted by the scientific community of the time and the one based on the local tradition of the inhabitants. Even though the local people were wrong in focusing only on the stability of Erto, their conceptual framework was certainly more appropriate. On the contrary, the science of the period used a conceptual framework that was clearly inadequate. In fact, the SADE engineers completely ignored the overall stability of the valley slopes, despite strong protests by the local residents. Having said that, it is disingenuous to contrast popular wisdom with science. Any opinion can be, and sociologically demands to be scientifically validated. Although with unacceptable costs in terms of human life, it was actually because of these mistakes that science and technology progressed. In the United States, in Downie, a gigantic ancient landslide, similar to that of Vajont, was detected. Alerted by the disaster in Italy, the Americans carefully studied the slopes (an internationally recognised practice today) and, to address the problem, they did not fail to compare the situation of Downie with that of Vajont, also requesting the collaboration of the aforementioned Edoardo Semenza (2005): 136 ff.). The construction of a series of drainage tunnels was proposed, a possible solution that was also suggested by Leopold Müller for the Vajont valley. The dam was built and is still in operation today. Once more, the Vajont disaster shows how risk analysis requires conceptual frameworks, which lead to the inclusion or exclusion of relevant facts. The SADE engineers focused mainly on engineering problems, largely neglecting the geological ones. The inhabitants, on the other hand, centred their attention precisely on the geological aspects of the valley, even though they were mistakenly focused solely on the stability of the town of Erto.

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From a philosophical point of view, this explains the different assessment of the risk as a result of accepting the hypothesis in question: the danger of the dam for the inhabitants. The SADE engineers underestimated the risk because they used a conceptual framework that was too narrow. Misguided by this framework which with experience proved to be more and more inappropriate, the Sade engineers continued to take greater risks up to the point of making decisions that were punishable under criminal law. Whereas, the inhabitants, who used a wider conceptual framework, were immediately deeply alarmed by the consequences of building a dam of that size. Conceptual frameworks are essential to determine the relevance of the empirical data, linking them with hypotheses under scrutiny. Without having any notion of what is relevant, no research could be carried out. No one could examine all the potentially relevant facts. However, different conceptual frameworks do not construct different realities. They rather focus on different aspects of the same reality, enabling cognitive progress through mutual criticism and the accumulation of experience.

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Palmieri, N. W. (1997). Vajont, Stava, Agent Orange. Il costo di scelte irresponsabili. Padova: CEDAM. Parker, W. S. (2011). When climate models agree: The significance of robust model predictions. Philosophy of Science, 78(4), 579–600. Peirce, C. S. (1877). The fixation of belief. In Peirce (1931–5). Collected papers (C. Hartshorne & P. Weiss Eds.). Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. (Vol. V, pp. 223–247). Phillips, L. D. (1973). Bayesian statistics for social scientists. London: Nelson and Sons. Press, S. J., & Tanur, J. M. (2001). The subjectivity of scientists and the Bayesian approach. New York: Wiley. Preston, J. (1997). Feyerabend. Philosophy, science and society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Putnam, H. (1994). The diversity of the sciences. In J. Conant (Ed.), Words and life (pp. 463–480). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rhodes, R. (1986). The making of atomic bomb. New York: Touchstone Books. Rudner, R. (1953). The scientist qua scientist makes value judgments. Philosophy of Science, 20, 1–6. Schwarz, M., & Thompson, M. (1990). Divided we stand. Redefining politics, technology and social choice. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Semenza, E. (2005). La storia del Vaiont raccontata dal geologo che ha scoperto la frana (1st ed., 2001). Ferrara: K-flah Editore. Shrader-Frechette, K. S. (1991). Risk and rationality. Berkeley: University of California Press. Solomon, S., et al. (Eds.). (2007). Technical summary. Working Group I. Fourth Assessment Report “The Physical Science Basis”. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. Steele, K. (2012). The scientist qua policy advisor makes value judgments. Philosophy of Science, 79(5), 893–904. Winsberg, E. (2012). Values and uncertainties in the predictions of global climate models. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, 22(2), 111–137. Wynne, B. (1996). May the sheep safely graze? A reflexive view of the expert-lay knowledge divide. In S. Lash, B. Szerszynski, & B. Wynne (Eds.), Risk, Environment & Modernity (pp. 44–83). London: Sage Publications.

Chapter 4

Scientific Research and Truth

Abstract After examining the scientific method in Peirce’s work and its connection with truth, I will deal with the relationship between pure science – the aim of which is only truth – and applied science – the aim of which is the implementation of practical applications. Here, I will distance myself from Dewey’s instrumentalism, which involves levelling pure science to applied science. In the last section, conclusions will be drawn and the meaning of ‘truth’ and, consequently, of ‘objectivity’ explained. We will begin to see why science and morality are two aspects of the same logic of inquiry, whose aim is the pursuit of truth. Keywords Belief · Method (m. of tenacity, m. of authority, a priori m., m. of science) · Doubt (‘irritation’ of d., fictitious d., Cartesian d.) · Objectivity (moral values and o., different meanings of o.) · Philosophical fallacy · Propositions (as instruments of inquiry) · Science (pure and applied) · Scientific theories and laws (as material rules of inference, as true in relevant domains) · Semantic realism · Technology (t. different from ‘technics’ and ‘applied science’) · Truth (morality and t., pragmatist theory of t., t. as correspondence, t. and convergence of opinions)

4.1

The Scientific Mentality

In the paper that paved the way for pragmatism, “The Fixation of Belief”, Peirce identifies various methods for solving what he calls the ‘irritation of doubt‘which arises out of problematic situations. The choice of the term ‘irritation’, being a psychological one, is not the most appropriate. Clearly, in this context, irritation is only a secondary aspect of situations in which our expectations are frustrated by events and, consequently we are undecided as to what action to take. From the point of view of pragmatism, the emphasis is not on the psychological discomfort, but on the difficulty of acting appropriately. There is one striking thing about Peirce’s essay: breaking with a millennial tradition, Peirce claims that the immediate objective of scientific research is not the truth, but the elimination of irritation caused by doubt. He states: “We may fancy that [. . .] we seek not merely an opinion, but a true opinion. But put the fancy to the © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 P. Barrotta, Scientists, Democracy and Society, Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning 16, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74938-9_4

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test, and it proves groundless; for as soon as a firm belief is reached we are entirely satisfied, whether the belief is true or false” (Peirce 1877, 5.375: 232). Once the objective of scientific research has been established, it is by no means strange to compare it with other methods that seem somewhat bizarre, such as the method of tenacity that is similar, to use Peirce’s own words, to the technique of the “ostrich [when it] buries its head in the sand as danger approaches” (ibid., 5.377: 235). As a method to arrive at the truth, the method of tenacity is obviously inadequate, but it may well be effective if the purpose is to avoid the irritation that arises from doubt: “A man may go through life, systematically keeping out of view all that might cause a change in his opinion, and if he only succeeds [. . .] I do not see what can be said against his doing so” (ibid., 5.377: 235). Peirce uses the term ‘method’ to indicate four different approaches that each individual uses to try to resolve doubt. In this case also the choice of term is likely to be misleading, especially for the contemporary reader. In the essay there are no methodological rules set out, such as those found in Popper’s writings, for example. It is, rather, a question of different mentalities or attitudes. The four methods analysed by Peirce do not denote sets of rules, but different anthropological types, as we will better see when we address the relevance of a correct scientific mentality to ensure that democratic societies function well. The method of tenacity is bound to fail for a very simple reason. Man is a social animal, and therefore, “The man who adopts it will find that other men think differently from him, and it will be apt to occur to him, in some saner moment, that their opinions are quite as good as his own, and this will shake his confidence in his belief” (ibid., 5.378: 235). The method of authority will fail for quite similar reasons. This is the method of the states that today we would call totalitarian, because it consists in systematic indoctrination and repression of those who think differently. However, no state is able to regulate all aspects of human life and there will always be men, intellectually more curious than the others, who possess a wider sort of social feeling; they see that men in other countries and in other ages have held to very different doctrines from those which they themselves have been brought up [. . .]. [And] their candour [cannot] resist the reflection that there is no reason to rate their own views at a higher value than those of other nations and other centuries; thus giving rise to doubts in their mind. (ibid., 5.381: 238)

The reasons that lead to failure of the a priori method of reasoning, which characterises metaphysics, are only apparently different. Peirce’s treatment of this is objectively rather cursory. He merely states that this method “makes of inquiry something similar to the development of taste; but taste, unfortunately, is always more or less a matter of fashion, and accordingly metaphysicians have never come to any fixed agreement” (ibid., 5.383: 241). The reasons for such a negative judgement are, however, found in his previous works, the so-called anti-Cartesian essays (see, in particular, Peirce 1868a, b). It is in these papers that Peirce discards the idea of having an immediate, intuitive, non-inferential nature of knowledge. Given this human inability, Peirce (1877, 5.383: 242) can indeed

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state that, though more respectably, “This method [. . .] does not differ in a very essential way from that of authority.” Indeed, the authority that comes from the alleged intuitive knowledge does not safeguard us against the doubt that inevitably arises when we discover the existence of people and cultures, also highly sophisticated ones, that have mutually incompatible beliefs. Scientific method is the only one that can achieve the objective. It succeeds by following a very different path from the others. The first three methods try to avoid the emergence of doubt by defending accepted beliefs, isolating them from possible criticisms and interferences. Scientific method is unique because it seeks, instead, to avoid doubt by reaching beliefs that are as robust as possible, thanks to a careful gathering of facts independent of the opinions of individuals: “To satisfy our doubts, therefore, it is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs may be determined by nothing human, but by some external permanency – by something upon which our thinking has no effect” (ibid., 5.384: 242). It is on this basis that Peirce (ibid., 5.384: 243) introduces the ‘fundamental hypothesis’ of science, the existence of Reals: Such is the method of science. Its fundamental hypothesis, restated in more familiar language, is this: There are Real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinions about them; those Reals affect our senses according to regular laws, and, though our sensations are as different as are our relations to the objects, yet, by taking advantage of the laws of perception, we can ascertain by reasoning how things really and truly are.

The way in which science tries to avoid the emergence of doubt would thus seem to be the following: through a careful study of reality, instead of defending accepted beliefs, the scientific mentality challenges them in order to improve them, meaning to enable them to deal with the broadest spectrum of future situations. In this way, we will avoid the conflicts between our expectations and reality, from which the irritation of doubt inevitably arises. At this point in the discussion, we need a break. It would appear that we have reached an obvious tension within Peirce’s thought. In fact, it was initially said that the goal of research is to avoid the emergence of doubt. Now, instead, it has been argued that the scientific method deliberately questions accepted beliefs. These two arguments do not seem to be easily reconcilable, since questioning a belief precisely means raising doubts about its soundness. More than guaranteeing the peace of a mind without any doubts, science now appears to promise an endless creation of new doubts. In other words, what seems unsustainable in Peirce’s position is the theory that scientific research begins only when accepted beliefs reach a crisis. As Peirce (ibid., 5.374–5: 231–2) argues: “The irritation of doubt causes a struggle to attain a state of belief. I shall term this struggle Inquiry, though it must be admitted that this is sometimes not a very apt designation. The irritation of doubt is the only immediate motive for the struggle to attain belief.” Contrary to what Peirce maintains, one might note that the scientific mentality is the reason or the cause, certainly not the remedy, for the emergence of doubts, at least in many and important cases of doubt. In his next essay “How to Make Our Ideas Clear”, Peirce (1878, 5.394: 253) himself

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concedes that, “Feigned hesitancy, whether feigned for mere amusement or with a lofty purpose, plays a great part in the production of scientific inquiry.” The idea that science is a ‘continuous revolution’, one of the human activities that more strongly challenges even the most consolidated views, has been popularised by Popper. However, here we do not have to embrace Popper’s point of view. The crucial issue is that even the method of tenacity, surely the crudest of the methods examined by Peirce, may seem more appropriate than the scientific one if the objective is to avoid situations of doubt. As Peirce (1877, 5.377: 234–5) writes: if it be true that death is annihilation, then the man who believes that he will certainly go straight to heaven when he dies, provided he has fulfilled certain simple observances in this life, has a cheap pleasure which will not be followed by the least disappointment. [. . .] A man may go through life, systematically keeping out of view all that might cause a change in his opinions.1

In light of these considerations, it is no surprise that Peirce’s essay has often been judged to be totally inadequate.2 To understand the real merits of Peirce’s thesis, we need to clarify what to understand by the affirmation that science has the objective of eliminating doubt. The main point here is to show that the first three methods are not autonomous with respect to the scientific method, since, in order to be effective, they must implicitly use the same method of science. Unlike scientific method, they are not coherent, as Peirce (ibid., 5.384: 243) seems to suggest when he says: “No doubts of the [scientific] method [. . .] necessarily arise from its practice, as is the case with all the others.” Let us take the method of tenacity. Those who follow this method must carefully avoid people who think differently from them, they must retreat into restricted social environments, and need to sustain their tenacity by reading books that reassure them. In short, they have to gather information about social events that will allow them to isolate themselves as far as possible from dangerous influences in consideration of the beliefs held in them. To increase their chances of success, they implicitly have to use the scientific method. This difficulty is also evident in the method of authority. As you will recall, Peirce argues that the method of authority is bound to fail in any case, since the state will never be able to regulate all aspects of human life. As a result, the individuals who live there will have to use the scientific method, when they are faced with doubt, whether they like it or not. In a word, in these circumstances they will have to weigh up the facts and evaluate the opinions that are different from theirs. Finally, we have seen that the a priori method of reasoning is only a more respectable variant of the method of authority. Again, we have to use the scientific

1

On this, see also Scheffler (1974), Chap. vi, who discusses this critical line with great clarity. The harshest judgement is probably Murphey’s (1993: 164), also quoted by Scheffler, according to whom “In several respects the paper ‘The Fixation of Belief’ is one of the most curious and least satisfactory that Peirce ever wrote”. 2

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method when we want to persuade someone whose ‘intuitive knowledge’ is different from ours that ours is correct, since it would certainly be ineffective if everyone used their own intuition.3 These are the reasons that explain why no one can consciously adopt the three methods in an internally coherent way. We can now better understand how Peirce is able to affirm that the scientific method is the only one that has the potential to resolve situations in which doubt paralyses our action. There is no alternative between the different methods, since the first three – the methods of tenacity, authority, and a priori reasoning – fail because they only partially apply the method of science. Their approach is to apply it only to protect accepted beliefs, not to understand reality in order to reach beliefs that are as secure as possible given a wide range of situations. Peirce believes that the majority of advocates of the three methods unwittingly delude themselves. They sincerely believe they hold the correct beliefs: they simply do not want to question them. For example, those who follow the method of tenacity will say, “I hold steadfastly to the truth, and the truth is always wholesome” (1877, 5.377: 234). The citizens of a totalitarian state in good faith will feel that what they are taught is right. The followers of the a priori method of reason believe that their intuition will reveal true knowledge because it is immediate. All of them will fail because the social nature of man will prompt them to question their beliefs sooner or later. The only alternative consists in having a coherent scientific mentality, which also involves raising fictitious doubts in order to reach beliefs that are as solid as possible in the face of criticisms by other people and of the facts. The innovative character of science is not denied, because critical activity is the only way of hoping to attain beliefs that will safeguard us from future situations in which we will not be able to decide what action to take. Therefore, there are no contradictions in Peirce’s position. Peirce’s scientific method correctly describes scientific practice. He plainly admits the existence of fictitious doubts. For example, he states (ibid., 5.372, p. 230, fn. 2) that “for the sake of the pleasures of inquiry, men may want to seek out doubts.” This does not reduce the scope of Peirce’s criticisms to Cartesian doubt. Cartesian doubt is a systematic one, as it requires that all beliefs are questioned until we reach absolutely unequivocal knowledge. The scientific mentality, on the other hand, requires that, in order to criticise some beliefs, we must not doubt, at least provisionally, other beliefs so as to carry out the critical process as well as possible. Cartesian doubt would paralyse scientific research, while Peirce’s fictitious doubt promotes it.4

3

See Talisse (2007: 3). I have only slightly modified Talisse’s line of argument regarding the method of a priori reasoning, directly correlating it to Peirce’s attack on the claims of a strictly intuitive or immediate knowledge. 4 This point has been rightly pointed out by Scheffler, specifically in his essay on Peirce, see Scheffler (1974, Chap. vi).

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Now, to summarise what has been said in this section, the scientific method, as described by Peirce, is not a methodology in the modern sense. It rather describes a mentality that consists in gathering the facts carefully and listening to criticism in order to avoid situations in which our beliefs are unable to tell us how to act. In short, they are correct beliefs because they reflect the real, that ‘non-human’ thing that constrains all people in their action. This brings us to, perhaps it should just be mentioned, the theory of truth proposed by Peirce. Scientific method promises to relieve us from the irritation of doubt by not trying to defend existing beliefs, but by consciously and consistently pursuing true beliefs. We will come back to this in the last section of this chapter. First, we must compare the importance of the search for truth, as stated by Peirce, with Dewey’s instrumentalism.

4.2

Instrumentalism and Pure Science

John Dewey takes up the scientific method proposed by Peirce. However, he adds new meanings to it.5 In particular, we find a proposal in Dewey that is completely absent in Peirce. This is the claim that propositions are instruments for resolving problematic situations, where a situation is defined as problematic in the sense that it is “indeterminate [. . .] with respect to its issue,” as is the case when we are confronted with circumstances that are confused, obscure or even contradictory because they “[tend] to evoke discordant responses” (1938: 110). It is through this idea, in itself apparently rather innocuous, that Dewey comes to defend an instrumentalist concept of science, a concept that will lead us to address the question of the autonomy of pure research, which is too often pitted against applied research. It would be opportune here to anticipate the result we will reach. Dewey’s philosophy is considerably important for all those who intend to overcome the dualism between ‘pure science’ and ‘applied science’. It is a typical feature of Dewey’s philosophy to view all the dualisms of many philosophies with suspicion, such as the one between subject and object, the dualism between facts and values or the dualism between experience and reality. It should not be surprising then that his pragmatism also leads to tackling the dichotomy between pure and applied science. However, the only way to do this coherently is by actually dropping Dewey’s

5 For example, also for Dewey research begins with doubt, but the connotation of doubt explicitly loses any psychological characterisation. Doubt, says Dewey (1938: 109–10), belongs to the whole situation, it does not simply represent the mental state of the researcher: “We are doubtful because the situation is inherently doubtful. Personal states of doubt that are not evoked by and are not relative to some existential situation are pathological; when they are extreme they constitute the mania of doubting. Consequently, situations that are disturbed and troubled, confused or obscure, cannot be straightened out, cleared up and put in order, by manipulation of our personal states of mind. [. . .] It is a mistake [. . .] to suppose that a situation is doubtful only in a ‘subjective’ sense.”

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instrumentalism altogether, which, in my opinion, is one of the weaker aspects of his philosophy or, at least, a non-essential aspect of his pragmatism. To understand the reasons behind this theory, we need to elucidate the particular type of instrumentalism we must attribute to Dewey. This is necessary because it is not unusual to find scholars who identify instrumentalism with Dewey’s entire philosophy.6 Even though it is an interpretation that Dewey himself authorised (at least in one phase of his long philosophical career), I do not think that identifying his philosophy with instrumentalism is an advisable choice, even if only from a terminological point of view. Indeed, that kind of identification would impede the understanding of the best part of his pragmatism (or at least this is what I believe, and I will try to argue it here). Following a widely common interpretation, instrumentalism is that doctrine that sees scientific laws as material rules of inference. Being rules, we have no need to claim that scientific laws are true or false. Rather, they are instruments allowing us to make predictions. Through a simple example, we can easily understand what this statement means. According to this form of instrumentalism, the law-like proposition “All swans are white” would be reinterpreted as follows: ‘If a is a swan, then you are warranted to infer that a will be white.”7 By interpreting it like this, the task of a scientific law is to infer from observational statements (in our case, ‘a is a swan’) other observational statements (‘a is white’). Observational statements are true or false, while scientific laws should be seen as more or less useful predictive instruments. This is clearly at odds with semantic realism, for which scientific laws are genuine propositions in that they possess the property of being true or false. For semantic realism, the presence of one black swan would suffice to falsify the proposition, while for instrumentalism a single black swan would slightly diminish its predictive utility. Therefore, the term ‘instrumentalism’ is quite appropriate. For this conception of science, laws and theories are instruments (for predictive purposes). Of course, we are talking about conceptual instruments that should not be confused with tools such as a hammer or a screwdriver. As trivial as it may seem, this is a clarification that will later have a certain importance. Dewey seems to be very close to this conception. In Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, he states that propositions, being the means to resolve problematic situations, are

6 For example, see Hickman (1990), who notes that later, however, Dewey himself abandoned the term ‘instrumentalism’. See Dewey (1946: 291, fn. 3): “It is probable that I might have avoided a considerable amount of misunderstanding if I had systematically used ‘technology’ instead of ‘instrumentalism’ in connection with the view I put forth regarding the distinctive quality of science as knowledge.” 7 Here I am making an implicit reference to the idea that laws are inference tickets that can connect observational statements to each other. See Ryle (1949: 117): “A law is used as, so to speak, an inference ticket (a season ticket) which licenses its possessors to move from asserting factual statements to asserting other factual statements.” Here I will only outline semantic instrumentalism, which denies that law-like statements have a truth-value. In Sect. 2.1 I addressed the question of the reference of terms or concepts, which I will come back to in Sect. 5.2.

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neither true nor false, but only more or less efficient: “means are either effective or ineffective; pertinent or irrelevant; wasteful or economical, the criterion for the difference being found in the consequences with which they are connected as means. On this basis, special propositions are valid (strong, effective) or invalid (weak, inadequate); loose or rigorous, etc.” (1938: 287). Dewey’s instrumentalism, however, presents some new features with respect to the kind of instrumentalism that sees theories and laws as rules of inference. They are novelties that make Dewey’s instrumentalism more interesting, making it broader and more flexible, but at the same time they create tensions and difficulties that are hard to resolve. Instrumentalism, as we have characterised it, establishes prediction as the objective of science. As such, the objective of science a) is represented by observational statements (for, example, ‘Tomorrow there will a lunar eclipse’) and b) unlike scientific laws and theories understood as rules of material inference, observational statements can be true or false (Tomorrow we may not have the eclipse). In Dewey’s works, the objective of inquiry is far more extensive. As we have seen, the purpose of inquiry is to resolve problematic situations. The Continental drift theory, proposed by Wegener at the beginning of the twentieth century, is an excellent example of a theory that has resolved a problematic situation without, however, being able to offer specific predictions. Consequently, and opportunely, Dewey’s version of instrumentalism denies a fundamental characteristic of instrumentalism traditionally understood: the objective of research is to resolve problematic situations, not just the production of predicted observed statements. Dewey also reformulates the second above-mentioned feature of instrumentalism, and it is this re-formulation that is particularly unsatisfactory. Unlike the most common version of instrumentalism, Dewey does not argue that theories never have, in any circumstances whatsoever, a truth-value. On the contrary, he states that at the end of an inquiry, assertions of a general form, theories, are true or false. In Dewey’s logic of inquiry it is important to distinguish between ‘propositions‘, which are neither true nor false in that they are problem-solving instruments and ‘warranted assertions’ which, on the contrary, have a truth-value because they represent the findings, not the instrument, of the research. This distinction, like many others in Dewey, is justified by the different role played by propositions and ‘warranted assertions’ in an inquiry. Just as it makes little sense to state that a hammer, as a tool, is true or false, in the same way for Dewey it is improper to argue that a proposition, as an instrument, is true or false. Instead, both are more or less useful or effective as investigative tools. At the end of the inquiry when the propositions lose their instrumental character in view of the resolution of the problem, there are no objections to assigning them a truth-value.8

8

This also explains why outside of any context, that is, outside the context established by any research undertaken, the semantic distinction between propositions and warranted assertions does not make sense. As Dewey writes (1938: 122): “Were it not that knowledge is related to inquiry as a product to the operations by which it is produced [. . .] The content of any given proposition would have the value ‘true’ and ‘false’.”

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Dewey is very serious about the analogy between the instruments or conceptual means that are present during an investigation, on the one hand, and the objects used as instruments, on the other. In the essay “Propositions, Warranted Assertibility, and Truth”, he makes the close similarity between propositions and material tools (such as a hammer or a frame) explicit, concluding that, as tools, propositions cannot have a truth-value (see Dewey 1941: 205). As Thayer observes (1952: 119), it is only this analogy that leads him to claim that propositions, as means or instruments, are neither true nor false. Indeed, as stated earlier, at the end of the inquiry, when propositions lose their instrumental character, they acquire a truth-value. However, the difficulties Dewey is facing are obvious. Even accepting the idea that propositions are investigation tools, they retain a symbolic role that distinguishes them from objects. The proposition ‘Nails of a certain size are needed to build a table’ is an investigation tool, as it suggests what steps to take in order to reach the conclusion of the inquiry; and the nails which the proposition refers to are obviously a tool that, together with others, allows us to build the table. However, we cannot build a table with a proposition and we cannot arrive at the conclusion of an inquiry with a hammer. Therefore, the instrumental character of both cannot go so far as to deny that objects and propositions perform a different function in research, in that the latter retain a symbolic function that the former clearly does not have. In the spirit of Dewey’s philosophy, this functional diversity must be preserved. If the close analogy with the objects is overlooked, then it seems inevitable to concede that the propositions are true or false right from the initial stages of the investigation. What we should say is that from the outset a proposition has a truth-value, although, since it has an exploratory function, we are uncertain whether it is true or false.9 Obviously, as the investigation progresses, through the accumulation of evidence and experience, we reach the conclusive judgement, at which point we are finally able to attribute the value of true or false, thus resolving the initial situation of doubt. It is therefore advisable to concede that propositions have a truth-value, also when they are proposed in an investigation still under way. This, undoubtedly, leads to dispensing with semantic instrumentalism. It has already been seen how traditional instrumentalism is certainly more rigid and not as wide-ranging as Dewey’s instrumentalism, but on the other hand it appears to be more coherent. These difficulties do not affect the kind of instrumentalism that sees laws or theories as material rules for making inferences. In contrast to Dewey’s instrumentalism, any theoretical statement would still be devoid of truth even at the end of an inquiry, while truth or falsehood would only concern observational statements. So it would seem that Dewey’s instrumentalism is incoherent. However, we can save its spirit by re-formulating it. Through this reformulation we will be able to appreciate the reasons that may justify Dewey’s preference for applied science, at the expense of purely speculative research. For reasons that we will presently

9

This is compatible with the fact that during an investigation there is a process of continuous refinement of the initial propositions. I will not address this aspect of the investigation here since it will be dealt with in Sect. 5.1.

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see, I find this form of instrumentalism also unacceptable. This does not alter the fact that it is an undoubtedly interesting approach. In essence, according to this reformulation of Dewey’s thinking, instrumentalism does not consist in denying propositions a truth-value but in specifying the domain of application of propositions in the light of practical considerations.10 Let us return to the simple proposition from which we first started to explain semantic instrumentalism: ‘All swans are white’. Dewey’s instrumentalism could be reconstructed along these lines. Let us imagine that, before the discovery of black swans in Australia, a teacher in Europe had always taught her young students the truth of the proposition. Does the news of the black swans imply that she is forced to declare the proposition false? Not necessarily. For example, the proposition could be part of a course on the local flora and fauna. In consideration of the curriculum laid down by the school, the teacher could still say that the proposition is true in the relevant domain, in the light of her didactic needs. Semantic instrumentalism is thus abandoned (propositions now have a truth-value), but the instrumental character of the theories is maintained by specifying their domain of application, considering the practical needs of the teacher. An example taken from science is even more significant.11 As we know, Newton’s law of gravitation implies that Galileo’s law on falling bodies is false in a strictly formal- logical sense. However, in the context of bodies falling towards the earth, the two laws provide almost indiscernible predictions. For any practical, predictive and technological purpose, we could say that Galileo’s law is true in relation to a specified domain of application.12 The central point of this approach is that the truth of a proposition is not determined only by epistemic considerations (observations, experiments, etc.), but also by practical considerations, established by the problematic situation we intend to resolve (didactic, predictive, technological, etc.). In this context, the ‘absolute’ truth, which is independent of any context of application, has no regulatory role. The same decision to abandon a theory would have a strictly practical nature. A theory may prove to be of little use in any practically relevant domain, or we may find ourselves with too many theories, each one being true in very narrow domains. In the latter case, reasons of simplicity should prompt us to reduce the number of theories 10

Here I have reworked a suggestion put forward by Hookway (2000, Chapter 2). From the point of view of Dewey’s philosophy, the two examples present a substantial difference. The generic proposition ‘All swans are white’ does not seem to be based on a universal proposition, since it does not rely on systematic biological knowledge to connect the colour ‘white’ with the word ‘swan’. Dewey gave great importance to the distinction between universal propositions and generic ones (see Dewey 1938, Chapters 13 and 14). Although I believe it is of great interest, I preferred not to discuss it, because it is not directly relevant to my purposes and, as a result, it would have encumbered the reconstruction of Dewey’s instrumentalism. 12 This idea is clearly unsatisfactory for a logician (if Newton’s theory is true then Galileo’s theory must be false), but it is a recurring point of view among instrumentalist scientists. For example, it seems to well encapsulate Heisenberg’s point of view (see Popper 1956). The instrumental scientist’s intuition gives more importance to the specification of the domain of application than to formal-logical considerations. 11

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to be used. This is not, however, ontological simplicity (which would presuppose a metaphysical truth) but, in fact, eminently practical simplicity. Reconstructed in this way, Dewey’s instrumentalism is very appealing, as well as having the quality of internal coherence. However, it is still a philosophy that has to be rejected. The reason why is explained well by Popper. All the various forms of instrumentalism are obscurantist philosophies in the sense that they discourage scientific progress. The history of science agrees with Popper. As Francesco Barone (1979) already observed, instrumentalism would have made the Copernican revolution difficult, if not impossible. The Copernican system did not actually have any particular practical advantages over that of Ptolemy. Instead, one of the great merits of Copernicus is of an epistemological nature. By breaking with a consolidated tradition, he rejected the instrumentalist epistemology to search for a true conception of the world, independently of any practical concern. As Popper writes (1956: 152), the main defect of instrumentalism lies in the fact that it is “unable to account for the pure scientist’s interest in the truth and falsity.” This is because instrumentalism, to put it very briefly, consists in “the thesis that ‘pure’ science is a misnomer, and that all science is ‘applied’” (ibid.: 149). Dewey never explicitly defends the reduction of pure science to applied science. However, some of his affirmations appear clear and unequivocal. For example, in Experience and Nature he writes: What is sometimes termed ‘applied’ science, may then be more truly science than is what is conventionally called pure science. For it is directly concerned with not just instrumentalities, but instrumentalities at work in effecting modifications of existence in behalf of conclusions that are reflectively preferred [. . .]. Thus conceived, knowledge exists in engineering, medicine and the social arts more adequately than it does in mathematics and physics (Dewey 1925: 128).

It is likely that Dewey was led to accept instrumentalism because he appreciated science primarily because of its consequences in everyday experience, with all its obvious practical connections (see, for example, Mounce 1997: 164). This would explain his lack of interest in saving the autonomy of pure science. On the other hand, the levelling of all science to applied sciences is in conflict with other aspects of Dewey’s philosophy, which per se are no less important. I have repeatedly stressed how Dewey was suspicious of any form of dualism, which he sought to convert into simple distinctions justified by the different role that each concept plays in the inquiry. Following this typically Deweyan heuristic, we should not try to resolve the dualism between pure science and applied science by reducing the former to the latter. We should, rather, show how both exist side by side in the inquiry, even though they have a different function within it. In the next section I will try to explain the meaning of this affirmation, which is perfectly consistent with a crucial aspect of Dewey’s philosophy.

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Pure Science and Applied Science

The terms ‘pure science’ and ‘applied science’ are sometimes used too intuitively. Especially when we speak about ‘applied’ science, we would need to better define its relationship with ‘technics’ and ‘technology’, concepts that somehow overlap. In addition, there is the risk here of further confusion. With regard to ‘applied’ science’, it is unavoidable to speak of a practical sphere as opposed to the theoretical or ‘pure’ one. It should be clear from the context that in this instance we will talk of ‘practical’ in this generic sense, which must not to be confused with the more specialised one connected to the pragmatic maxim (see Sect. 2.1). We will begin with the notion of ‘pure’ science, where there do not appear to be any particular problems: the notion of pure science is defined as the search for truth regardless of any applicational purpose. Today, the term ‘basic research’ is frequently used instead of ‘pure science’. More complex is the case of ‘technics’. A distinction should be made between technics in the strict sense of the term and technics in the wider sense, which includes technology. Technics in the strict sense is based on ‘know how’ learned by example, thanks to the close relationship between master and apprentice. To use the terminology of Michael Polanyi (1962), it is a form of ‘tacit knowledge’ because it is not formulated linguistically. It is the kind of knowledge typical of craftsmen. It would certainly be a mistake to underestimate it. We only have to think of what the master masons managed to do in the construction of the Gothic cathedrals. They were people with a wide-ranging culture in the fields of religion, art, astronomy, and, of course, architecture.13 In its broadest sense, technics becomes ‘technology’, i.e., a rigorous reflection on the reliability of the means and tools used to achieve a certain goal. Unlike technics in the strict sense, technology is linguistic in nature. Therefore, the truth-value of the propositions belonging to technology is essential, which, to put it succinctly, have the following structure that we have already seen: ‘If you want to obtain the aim y, then you must use the means x’.14 This is where applied science connects to technology. Applied science is said to be a form of technology in the sense that the results of pure or theoretical science are applied in order to satisfy common needs by building tools and artifacts. In this context, it also becomes necessary to distinguish between applied science and technology. It may be observed that while applied science always strives to meet practical needs that are more or less directly related to everyday life, not all technological artifacts are designed for this purpose. The bubble chamber, designed by Donald A. Glaser, is a useful tool for a strictly cognitive purpose, as it enables the detection of elementary particles. Despite this and many other examples, there is no 13

See Gimpel (1958). Furthermore, it must be considered that tacit knowledge also has a role in scientific research. I will come back to tacit knowledge further on, in Sect. 6.3. 14 At this level of abstraction, we can disregard the notion of efficiency, which is obviously an integral part of the work of the technologist.

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doubt that today technology and applied science are concepts that are used in almost interchangeable ways. Technology has in fact gained importance, especially for its great impact on everyday life and its proven ability to satisfy the needs of humankind. Dewey does not dwell much on technics in the strict sense of the word. He was more interested in the experimental mentality, which resulted in the birth of both modern science and technology: When the rigid clamp of fixed ends was taken off from nature, observation and imagination were emancipated, and experimental control for scientific and practical purposes enormously stimulated. Because natural processes were no longer restricted to a fixed number of immovable ends or results, anything might conceivably happen. It was only a question of what elements could be brought into juxtaposition so that they would work upon one another. Immediately, mechanics ceased to be a separate science and became an organ for attacking nature. The mechanics of the lever, wheel, pulley and inclined plane told accurately what happens when things in space are used to move one another during definite periods of time. (Dewey 1920: 119).

The focal point of Dewey’s thought is that any study of nature requires the modification of what he calls the existential antecedents (the conditions prior to beginning the research) in order to study its consequences. That is why he states that true empiricism is experimental: “Sensory qualities are important. But they are intellectually significant only as a result of acts deliberately performed [during an experiment]” (Dewey 1929: 91). These claims are correct independently of Dewey’s instrumentalism. There is no doubt that experimental mentality gave rise to both modern science and technology. It is impossible to imagine the first without the second. To formulate his law on falling bodies, Galileo made use of inclined planes: a technology that is comparable, in its logical essence, to Glaser’s more sophisticated bubble chamber. Furthermore, it should be noted that by experimental mentality Dewey intends something more wide-ranging, such as to include astronomy, a science which is observational by its nature. We must bear in mind that in Dewey every investigation begins from problematic situations, where ‘situation’ is to be understood as the interaction between the researcher and the surrounding environment. This means that with the introduction of instrumentation such as the telescope, the astronomer inevitably modifies the prior ‘existential’ conditions in order to be able to carry out his own investigation.15 Today, with the so-called ‘big science’, the relationship between science and technology has become very strong. Perhaps the plastic image of their close-knit union is due to the Nobel Prize awarded to a physicist, Carlo Rubbia, in 1984, and an engineer Simon van der Meer, who contributed to the discovery of the W and Z

This is how Dewey (1938: 77) describes the birth of astronomy: “Observation of the change of position of constellations and stars, of the relation of the length of daylight to the sun’s place in relation to the constellations along the line of the equinox provided the required information. Instrumental devices were developed in order that the observations might be made; definite techniques for using the instruments followed.” 15

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bosons. Moreover, considered in the context of their own historical development, it is even obvious that there is no one single path that goes from pure science to technology. On the contrary, there is a process of constant feedback. For example, Boole conceived his logical studies as highly speculative, even the understanding of the laws of thought. He would never have imagined that his idea would pave the way for further research, which would in turn lay the foundations for the first computer programmes. Nor that today, no scientific research, either social or natural, could be done without the computer. Much the same applies to technology understood as applied science aimed at satisfying practical needs. Dewey explicitly denies the existence of a logical difference between pure science and applied science. In particular he denies that the latter differs from the former in its application to specific cases of the general laws discovered by pure science: when the generalization is once reached, it is assumed that singular propositions have served their whole logical purpose. This assumption is equivalent to denial that the use of a generalization to determine singulars has scientific purport. It is, of course, recognized that generalizations are so employed, for example, by engineers and medical men. But this use is regarded as extra-scientific or merely ‘practical’. This mode of conception both reflects and supports the invidious distinction between theory and practice, the alleged difference being expressed in a fixed logical difference between ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ science. (Dewey 1938: 433)

These are affirmations that we should agree with. They lead to reflection on an important point: sometimes pure and applied science are so closely connected that, within an investigation, we can separate them only through a process of abstraction. There is no distinction of logic or principle. Two examples demonstrate this. Let us take the case of the Genome project. As is well known, the purpose of the project was to identify the number and function of the genes present in the human genome. It was an undertaking that also yielded unexpected theoretical results. The discovery of a number of genes significantly lower than what had been expected actually called into question the attempt to reduce the complexity of human evolution to genetics. This is certainly a research study that could not be denied the title of ‘pure’ science. At the same time, the considerable financial contribution given to it was also justified by the practical aim of being able to early diagnose, and possibly cure, diseases of a presumably genetic origin.16 We can certainly distinguish a practical aspect and a theoretical or pure aspect of this research, but these are two aspects which are inextricably present in the same identical research. Another example is the Manhattan project. In this case, the practical purpose is actually obvious: to create a bomb that would finally put an end to World War II. However, to achieve this goal, the scientists had to resolve problems that could have been published in a journal of theoretical physics. Speaking of the Manhattan project, Forge writes (2008: 32): “research [. . .] was focused on such matters as the properties of the elements uranium and plutonium, which revealed important

16

On the genome project, refer to Evelyn Fox Keller’s now classic book, see Keller (2000).

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principles about the nucleus. It is easy to imagine such work being carried out in a university rather than at the weapons laboratory at Los Alamos”.17 In these cases, the practical aspects and the epistemic ones are closely linked. We can certainly distinguish them through a process of abstraction, but we cannot separate them in concrete terms. If we did, this would mean the undoing of the research underway. The dualism between pure science and applied science is therefore another case of the ‘philosophical fallacy’ analysed by Dewey: a distinction, the legitimacy of which lies in the reflections on what is happening in inquiry, becomes a dualism between concepts that are accepted as prerequisites of the inquiry; that is to say, in this case, antecedents as a starting point from which to carry out conceptually different research (one being theoretical or pure, the other applied or practical). Having clarified this, it should also be added that the actual term ‘applied’ is, at the very least, inappropriate. As our examples show, solving practical problems (disease diagnosis, bomb making) often requires resolving theoretical problems, not simply the application of theoretical knowledge gained from another research study. What we should emphasise, and with greater accuracy, I believe, is the different function, practical or theoretical, carried out by different aspects of the same identical research. There is no reason to believe that solving practical problems does not present tremendous theoretical challenges. There may still continue to be resistance, also of a psychological nature, I suspect. The concept of pure science is itself imbued with values, as demonstrated by the use of the adjective ‘pure’. It is argued that there are activities sole objective of which is pure knowledge. To give a few examples, the physics of black holes or theories on the origin of the universe, have nothing to do with practical aspects. The term ‘applied’ science may not be the best one, but the real problem lies in the autonomy of pure science. In this case, it is the object of research – to increase our knowledge of the world, to find truth – that determines its ‘purity’. When I rejected Dewey’s instrumentalism, I pointed out how the autonomy of pure science should be upheld, and we will come back to this. However, the argument used to defend its autonomy is wrong, for reasons that I have already explained in part when I set out the pragmatic maxim and Rudner’s argument. What we must always do is to look closely at the consequences of our actions and decisions. This is the main message of pragmatism. Sometimes, the consequences of our decisions are solely epistemic. With the proposal of a hypothesis, with the acceptance of a theory, only the beliefs of other inquirers, and with them their future observations or experiments are influenced. In other cases, decisions have practical and moral implications that are an integral part of the scientific research undertaken. Nevertheless, this is not a distinction of principle because the logic of the inquiry is the same, as evidenced by the fact that the nature of the consequences, moral or epistemic, is entirely accidental in that they are dependent on the social and cognitive circumstances. At the beginning of the twentieth century, nuclear physics

17

For an account of the making of the first atomic bomb, see Rhodes (1986).

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was a highly speculative adventure. The objective was to know the ultimate constituents of the world, to realise a dream that had fascinated philosophers for centuries. It was only with the advancement of knowledge, together with the Second World War drawing near, that the terrible practical consequences of nuclear research were soon realised. Any research – including the most ‘pure’ – could raise similar or different moral issues in the future. A further important consideration must be added to this. To argue that research has only epistemic consequences is, in itself, a decision that could have moral consequences in some situations. In Sect. 5.4, we will see the case of a physicist, Joliot-Curie, who wanted to publish the results of his research precisely because he was (highly debatably) convinced that the consequences would have been exclusively epistemic. The same decision that a piece of research is ‘pure’ is a decision that implies consequences, morally evaluable in principle. As Dewey shows, the very common idea that pure science is somehow different and ‘superior’ to applied science finds its origins in the idea that the ancient Greeks had of science.18 In their view, the purpose of science was to contemplate the ‘fullness of being’, which as such was not subject to change. Artisans possessed inferior knowledge, since the object of their work, instead, required the ‘becoming of being’ and so did not have an equal level of perfection. With a minimum of reflection, it should in fact be obvious that any technical activity implies change, in that it means taking some kind of material in order to turn it into something different. With the advent of experimental mentality and the scientific revolution, the metaphysics of the Greeks was abandoned. Thanks to technology, science modifies situations in order to observe the consequences. I agree with Dewey that, with the fall of Greek metaphysics, the devaluation of applied science in favour of pure science no longer makes sense. We must, nevertheless, avoid falling, through instrumentalism, into the diametrically opposite position. What we must say is that research as such, all research, faces problematic situations, which in principle have both epistemic and moral consequences. The difference between ‘pure science’ and ‘applied science’ is only pragmatic or functional.

4.4

Objectivity and the Search for the Truth

At the end of the first section of this chapter, we introduced the notion of truth. Very briefly, for Peirce, a belief is true if, at the conclusion of a continuous and correct application of the scientific method, in principle it cannot give rise to the ‘irritation’ of doubt. This would be a totally stable belief, because it is able to withstand any kind of experience or critical issue.

18

Dewey discusses at length the Greek concept of science in many of his works. In particular, I refer you to The Quest for Certainty, See Dewey (1929).

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Like any other predicate, even the predicate ‘true’ must be clarified by the pragmatic maxim. In this case, it involves examining the consequences, relevant to the action, of the assertion that a certain belief is true. When an individual claims that a belief is true, they must simply mean, so as not to fall into metaphysical nonsense, that no one who bases their actions on that belief will be assailed by the irritation of doubt. Peirce (1905, 5416: 279) is clear on this point: You only puzzle yourself by talking of this metaphysical ‘truth’ and metaphysical ‘falsity’, that you know nothing about. All you have any dealings with are your doubts and beliefs [. . .]. If your terms ‘truth’ and ‘falsity’ are taken in such senses as to be definable in terms of doubt and beliefs [. . .], well and good: in this case, you are only talking about doubt and belief. But if by truth and falsity you mean something not definable in terms of doubt and belief in any way, then you are talking of entities of whose existence you can know nothing, and which Ockham’s razor would clean shave off. Your problems would be greatly simplified, if, instead of saying that you want to know the ‘Truth’, you were simply to say that you want to attain a state of belief unassailable by doubt.

Sometimes, we speak about a pragmatic definition of truth, but it is preferable to talk of a pragmatic elucidation of the meaning of the term ‘truth’. Peirce (1878) did not believe that the ultimate task of philosophy was to propose definitions. Definitions per se have a role in clarifying a concept, but they need to be given a further level of clarity, which is offered by the pragmatic maxim itself.19 In this context, it may be useful to compare the pragmatic theory of truth with the theory that defines truth as correspondence between propositions and states of the world. Pragmatist theory does not deny the definition of truth as correspondence. These are not two definitions in direct competition. Rather, through the pragmatic maxim, Peirce’s theory further clarifies the definition of correspondence between a proposition and the world by connecting it with doubt and belief. Without this connection, the very meaning of correspondence remains obscure.20 To reiterate, for Peirce the concept of truth must be clarified by connecting it to belief and doubt. If a person claims that a hypothesis or belief is true, then they mean that no one who bases his actions on that hypothesis or belief will ever be assailed by doubt. In the pragmatist theory proposed by Peirce, therefore, it is not the agreement itself that is important, but only the agreement that emerges out of beliefs which in

19

Regarding this point, in connection with the truth, see also Misak (2004: 35 ff.). Obviously, Dewey, just like Peirce, considers the correspondence theory of truth to be unsatisfactory. Indeed, in Dewey (1911: 112), we find the reasons for this dissatisfaction stated very clearly: “Now [correspondence] is either itself a proposition or it is not. If it is a proposition, it claims to be true or to agree with its object; this object is beyond itself, and hence another proposition is required for its comparison, and so on ad infinitum. If it is not a proposition, then what is it? If it is some kind of an object, what kind? And whatever the kind of object, truth or agreement is no longer a trait of a proposition but of this object. Either way out is fatal to the original definition.” Contemporary correspondentists, such as Popper, avoid these types of obscurity by following Tarski and distinguishing metalanguage from object language. However, as Misak mentioned (2004: 127 ff.), in this way we avoid resorting to something obscure at the cost of giving it a definition with no content. The way around this consists in accepting Tarski’s definition and giving it content by linking it to doubt and to the investigation needed to resolve the doubt. 20

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principle do not provoke the irritation of doubt because they are the result of a constant application of the method of science. Peirce seems to place truth as the ultimate goal of ‘pure science’, but not of practical and moral activities. In the essay “The First Rule of Logic”, for example, he writes: The only end of science, as such, is to learn the lesson that the universe has to teach it. [. . .] The value of Facts [for science] lies only in this, that they belong to Nature, and Nature is something great, and beautiful, and sacred, and eternal, and real – the object of its worship and its aspiration. It therein takes an entirely different attitude toward facts from that Practice takes. For Practice, facts are the arbitrary forces with which it has to reckon and to wrestle. (Peirce 1898a, 5.589: 412)

In addition, with regard to moral evaluations, Peirce sometimes claims that they are the product of mere instinct. In fact, he states that “matters of vital importance must be left to sentiment, that is to instinct” (Peirce 1898b, 1.637: 348). It is in some respects an antithetical position with respect to Dewey’s. From the point of view of the possibilities of the logic of inquiry, Dewey favours the practical sphere over pure science, while Peirce seems to prioritise pure science in relation to all that is practical. Nevertheless, we should distinguish Peirce’s beliefs from the actual content of his theory. Indeed, there are scholars who believe that Peirce’s theory of truth can be extended to moral and practical questions (cf. Misak 2000, 2004). If this thesis were correct then we should say that practical judgements are true or false, just as scientific ones. More precisely, even in the case of morality, we should say that a (moral) belief is true if, at the end of a continuous and correct application of the scientific method, it does not in principle give rise to doubt. Peirce’s concept of truth raises many subtle problems. Here, I will only deal with two issues that are essential if we want to extend the Peircean theory of truth to morality. The first concerns the idea of convergence, through the application of the scientific method, of different opinions to one single and true belief. In the essay “How to Make Our Ideas Clear”, Peirce speaks of the ‘cheerful hope’ that a consistent and continuous application of the scientific method will make everyone’s views converge into a single and true belief. He expresses it in this way: “All the followers of science are animated by the cheerful hope that the process of investigation, if only pushed far enough, will give one certain solution to each question to which they apply it. [. . .]. They may at first obtain different results, but, as each perfects his method and his processes, the results are found to move steadily together toward a destined centre” (Peirce 1878, 5.407: 268). From the point of view of textual evidence, there is some reason to believe that Peirce conceived the development of science as a progressive move closer to the truth. In “Truth, Falsity and Error”, for example, he writes: “Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief [. . .]. in the progress of science its error will indefinitely diminish, just as the error of 3.14159, the value given for π, will indefinitely diminish as the calculation is carried to more and more places of

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decimals” (Peirce 1901, 5.565: 394). This is a very strong conception of scientific progress. Taken literally, we should say that Einstein’s theory is closer to the truth than Newton’s theory in the same way that the value of π expressed by the first five decimal places is closer to its true value than the π value expressed by only four decimal places. As Quine remarks (1960: 23), “there is a lot wrong” in this idea, “since the notion of limit depends on that of ‘nearer than’, which is defined for numbers and not for theories.” At most, the idea of asymptotic convergence towards the truth can be taken as a vague analogy. Even interpreted like this, it would be a bad analogy. In Peirce we can trace two arguments that support it, though both are very weak. The first argument, noted by Rescher (1978: 22), concerns Peirce’s possible belief that science had already discovered the fundamental laws of nature: “As Peirce saw it – writes Rescher – the current stage of scientific knowledge is such that further scientific progress is solely a matter of increasing accuracy.” If that were so, scientific research would be restricted to only finding new details, just as new decimal places are discovered for the value of π. However, as Rescher himself observes, after Kuhn’s work this is a vision of the history of science that is very difficult to endorse. Along with the detailed refinement of the knowledge taken as having already been acquired (‘normal science’, to use Kuhn’s terminology), conceptual revolutions also occur in science (the ‘paradigm shift’, again, in Kuhnian terminology). Another possible analogy is found in the law of large numbers in statistics. Peirce was fascinated by how order could emerge from apparent initial disorder. When we throw a well-balanced dice, at first we observe somewhat confused sequences, but later we see the relative frequencies stabilise around the probability of the outcome of each number being 1/6. In a highly detailed analysis, Andrew Reynolds (2002) examined the positive influence that the law of large numbers had on Peirce. It is because of this that Peirce came to support indeterminism in physics, contrary to the beliefs of the scientific and philosophical community of his time.21 However, it would be difficult to support a serious analogy between the law of large numbers and scientific progress. The law is a mathematical theory that is applied correctly only if its assumptions are valid for that domain. And this is not the case for scientific progress. For example, to apply the law of large numbers to the rolling of a dice, we must assume that the throws are statistically independent. This assumption is entirely unrealistic in the case of scientific research. Nonetheless, it is possible to defend Peirce’s theory of truth independently of the convergence theory. As we have already seen, the Peircean theory of truth is the result of a conceptual clarification in the light of the pragmatic maxim. When I say that a hypothesis is true, what I mean is that no one who bases their actions on that hypothesis will be assailed by doubt. This is an elucidation of the meaning of ‘This

See his criticism of ‘necessitarianism’, or of the idea that “the state of things existing at any time, together with certain immutable laws, completely determine the state of things at every other time.” See Peirce (1892, 6.37: 30). 21

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hypothesis is true’, an explanation that per se has nothing to do with the claim that different opinions necessarily converge towards a single true belief thanks to the application of the scientific method. The meaning of assertions concerning the truth of a certain belief should be clarified, in a slightly more extended way, such as the following: when I say that hypothesis H is true I mean to say that anyone, if they applied the scientific method, at the end of the investigation, would agree to base their actions on H, as H would never give rise to irritation of doubt. This is the correct content of the ‘cheerful hope’ that Peirce speaks of. Previously, we saw the reasons why Peirce rejects alternative methods to the scientific one. They are inadequate because they irremediably lead us to situations characterised by doubt. The only method that gives us some hope is the scientific one. This appears to be quite different from the idea of ⁣⁣an inevitable convergence of opinions towards the truth. It certainly does not imply the idea of an asymptotic convergence.22 However, it should be said that attributing the convergence theory to Peirce beyond all doubt is questionable. After introducing the ‘cheerful hope’ that there is a convergence of beliefs towards a ‘destined centre’, in effect Peirce (1878, 5408: 269) observes that “Our perversity and that of others may indefinitely postpone the settlement of opinion; it might even conceivably cause an arbitrary proposition to be universally accepted as long as the human race should last.” The expression ‘cheerful hope’ should, then, be taken literally. We must therefore separate the theory of truth from a specific and controversial vision of scientific progress. By applying the scientific method, everyone learns from experience, learning from their own mistakes and from criticisms made by others. Thanks to the accumulation of empirical evidence and mutual criticism, controversies often find a solution as the initial doubts are eliminated thanks to the inquiry. However, this is not proof that we are ‘closer’ (in a way that can be determined analytically) to an end-point. Separating Peirce’s theory of truth from the idea of asymptotic progress towards truth is an undoubted advantage for anyone who wants to extend the theory to morality. The idea of convergence is perhaps intuitively plausible in science, even though, and it is worth emphasising it, it does not seem to be an inspired vision. In addition to the already mentioned analytical difficulties, we must remember that science is far more fragmented than it appears, even when on the surface there is 22

Here there is a problem that gave scholars of Peirce (and Peirce himself) something to think about. A line of research is not always available. For example, it’s hard to imagine a line of research that makes me discover the truth of the claim that ‘a dinosaur walked in the place where I live exactly a million years ago’. This is the problem of the so-called ‘buried secrets’. Our intuition tells us that a proposition is true or false regardless of the possibility of having a line of research that establishes its truth-value. The pragmatic explanation of the meaning of the term ‘true’ instead seems to suggest that the truth-value in these cases is undetermined. This would violate the law of the excluded third. On this point, see Hookway (2000, Chap. 2), and Misak (2004). Besides, as Misak noted (2004: 43), the meaning Peirce gave to the term ‘true’ includes a second conditional: “if, if inquiry relevant to H were to be pursued as far as it could fruitfully go, then H would be believed, then H is true”. I will say something about this last point later, when I introduce the meaning that we must give to the term ‘objective’.

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unanimous consensus.23 In any case, the idea of convergence is clearly a desperate one in the case of morality. A dispassionate look at history shows us no convergence, but rather the persistence of an irreducible plurality of different conceptions and moral evaluations. The second question I would like to address deals with the sort of consequences that result from the acceptance of a scientific hypothesis, on the one hand, and of a moral judgement, on the other. In the case of science, the consequences regard controlled observations, thanks to the instruments available. However, Peirce gave experience a very broad meaning. Taking up Gauss’s idea that algebra is a “science of the eye” (Peirce 1931–5, 1.34: 14), he claimed, for example, that mathematical theories also had consequences in experience through the use of icons or diagrams. Metaphysics itself is an “observational science” (Peirce 1898c, 6.5: 5) because it is based on common experience. In this case, it is a question of such widespread phenomena “with which every man’s experience is so saturated that he usually pays no particular attention to them” (Peirce 1898c, 6.2: 2). Misak finds that this flexibility of the concept of experience is an advantage of the theory proposed by Peirce, especially in the case of wanting to extend his theory of truth to morality. From the point of view of a phenomenology of moral judgements, people are led to formulate evaluations and arguments in the light of certain experiences. As Misak (2000: 86) writes: “there is an important consideration against expelling moral judgments from the scope of truth and knowledge: the phenomenology of morality is that it aspires to truth. We argue, debate, and agonise over our judgements and choices as if there really is a truth of the matter at stake, something that we are trying to discover.” Just as in the case of metaphysics (as Peirce interpreted it), Misak believes that the consequences of a moral judgement concern a type of observation based on common experience. In this context, it is worth comparing moral judgements of the kind ‘This man is brave’ with perceptual judgements of the type ‘This table is brown’. Consistent with fallibilism, Peirce felt that even the most elementary perceptual judgements such as ‘This table is brown’ were fallible. They are fallible because they are the result of inferences, not of immediate knowledge. However, they are inferences that are so spontaneous as not to be noticed: “the perceptive judgment is – Peirce writes – the result of a process, although of a process not sufficiently conscious to be controlled, or, to state it more truly, not controllable and therefore not fully conscious. If we were to subject this subconscious process to logical analysis, we should find that it terminated in what that analysis would represent as an abductive inference” (Peirce 1903a, 5.181: 113). Being the product of inferences, perceptual judgements can also be subject to reflection and, as a result, can be challenged. Nevertheless, they are generally accepted ‘instinctively’, not with a complete sense of awareness. The same applies to moral judgements. Faced with the perception of an act of courage, I instinctively say: ‘This man is courageous’. This statement may well be 23

See Sect. 3.3. We will return to this issue.

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spontaneous and not controlled by a conscious investigation. However, just as with perceptual judgement, this does not mean that it does not have an inferential nature. Consequently, even if we concede, with Peirce, that at least some moral evaluations are instinctive, this does not necessarily mean that moral judgements are immediate, non-inferential, and not subject to rational thinking. There are no reasons why Peirce’s theory of truth should not be extended to moral judgements. Moral judgements are also objective in the precise sense of being true or false. A moral judgement is true if, after careful investigation, after evaluating all the facts and arguments, in principle it does not give rise to the irritation of doubt. While it is clear per se, it is worth briefly pausing to reflect on this specific meaning of ‘objective’, since the term has acquired many other meanings, including some incompatible ones. Douglas (2009, Chap. 6) lists no less than seven different meanings of objectivity. For example, an assertion is considered to be objective thanks to the process that produced it; or, an assertion is objective in the sense that it is intersubjectively controllable; or even when it is well balanced against all the values involved; and so on. The only thing that all these meanings have in common is that assertions are reliable and deserving of our trust, albeit for different reasons. From the perspective I have adopted, it would be pointless to present this typology in detail. In fact, our problem lies in clarifying what is to be understood by the affirmation that a moral judgement is objective because we can evaluate the truth of it. As we will see, it is a problem linked to the reality of values, whereas Douglas tries to be as agnostic as possible on this point. In this context, there are two fundamental meanings of ‘objectivity’. In the first, in order to affirm their objectivity, moral judgments should correspond to values that exist independently of humankind. Since it is certainly not easy to defend the idea of a world of values independent of humankind’s activities, it would follow that judgements on values are not objective. This is a legitimate and respectable sense of ‘objectivity’, but it is not the only one. If we carefully follow Peirce’s theory of truth, we soon find another equally legitimate and respectable meaning of objectivity. The pragmatist does not need to support the existence of values independent of the presence of human beings. Man remains the ‘carrier’ of values. However, we must notice how Peirce distinguishes between ‘reality’ and ‘existence’: both represent the notion of ‘objectivity’, though with a different meaning. According to Peirce’s reasoning, only brute facts exist. They are the resistance that the world puts up to every particular action.24 The laws of nature, of regularity, universal laws, codes of conduct, do not exist in this sense. They are, however, objective in the sense that they are real because they can

As he writes in the second of his Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism: “Imagine yourself making a strong muscular effort, say that of pressing with all your might against a half-open door. Obviously, there is a sense of resistance. There could not be effort without an equal resistance any more than there could be a resistance without an equal effort that it resists. Action and reaction are equal“(Peirce 1903b, 5.45: 32). A better collection of the Lectures on Pragmatism can be found in Peirce (1992–8, vol. 2). In Peirce’s terminology, the brute facts, thus understood, belong to the category of Secondness. 24

References

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hopefully be discovered by potentially infinite investigation.25 The laws are real and objective in the sense of being true, and the same applies to moral judgements.26 The pragmatist theory of truth offered by Peirce has given rise to many discussions.27 Here, I have only shown the reasons for breaking the link between the theory of truth and the thesis of convergence. In addition, following Misak, I intended to suggest the reasons that should lead us to believe that the theory can be extended to include moral evaluations. The central point I intend to argue is that science and morality are two aspects of the same logic of inquiry, the aim of which is truth. To defend this argument convincingly, however, it is not enough to observe that – in analogy with perceptual judgements – the instinctive nature of some moral judgements does not mean that they do not have an inferential character. A moral judgement is not only made up of evaluations so deeply rooted in accepted codes of conduct as to be instinctive inferences, of which we are not even aware. It still remains to be clarified how moral judgements can be comparable to real hypotheses, including those consciously formulated, and how they should be controlled by experience. This is the problem that will bring us back to Dewey and his theory of values.

References Barone, F. (1979). Introduzione to Opere di Nicola Copernico (pp. 9–72). Turin: UTET. Dewey, J. (1911). The problem of truth. In Dewey (1998). The Essential Dewey (L. Hickman & T. Alexander Eds.). Bloomigton/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. (Vol. 2, pp. 101–130). Dewey, J. (1920). Reconstruction in philosophy. In Dewey (1969–1991). The collected works (J. A. Boydstone Ed.). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. (The middle works, Vol. 12, pp. 77–201). Dewey, J. (1925). Experience and Nature. In Dewey (1969–1991). The collected works. (The Later Works, Vol. 1). Dewey, J. (1929). The quest for certainty. In Dewey (1969–1991). The collected works. (The later works, Vol. 4). Dewey, J. (1938). Logic: The theory of inquiry. In Dewey (1969–1991). The collected works. (The later works, Vol. 12).

Again, to use the words of Peirce, laws belong to the category of Thirdness: “Reality is an affair of Thirdness as Thirdness [. . .]. Reality consists in regularity. Real regularity is active law” (Peirce, 1903b, 5.121: 78). 26 One might insist that the laws of physics are objective in the sense of describing a reality independent of any human perspective, while moral judgments always depend on some perspective. However, Peirce did not accept the idea that a true belief described a reality independent of any human perspective. This is already evident in Peirce (1878, 5.407–8, pp. 268–7): “The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is real. That is the way I would explain reality. [. . .] reality is independent, not necessarily of thought in general, but only of what you or I or any finite number of men may think about it.” 27 For a more complete overview, in addition to Misak (2004), see for example Hookway (2000) and Wiggins (2004). 25

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Dewey, J. (1941). Propositions, warranted assertibility, and truth. In Dewey (1998). The Essential Dewey (Vol. 2, pp. 201–212). Dewey, J. (1946). Problems of men. New York: Philosophical Library. Douglas, H. (2009). Science, policy, and the value-free ideal. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Forge, J. (2008). The responsible scientist. A philosophical inquiry. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Gimpel, J. (1958). Les bâtisseurs de cathédrales. Paris: Seuil. Hickman, L. (1990). Dewey’s pragmatic technology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hookway, C. (2000). Truth, rationality, and pragmatism. Themes from Peirce. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Keller, E. F. (2000). The century of the gene. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Misak, C. (2000). Truth, politics, and morality. London: Routledge. Misak, C. (2004). Truth and the end of inquiry. A Peircean account of truth (1st ed., 1991). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mounce, H. O. (1997). The two pragmatisms. From Peirce to Rorty. London/New York: Routledge. Murphey, G. M. (1993). The development of Peirce’s philosophy (1st ed., 1961). Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Peirce, C. S. (1868a). Questions concerning certain faculties claimed for man. In Peirce (1931–5). Collected papers (Vol. V, pp. 135–155). Peirce, C. S. (1868b). Some consequences of four incapacities. In Peirce (1931–5). Collected papers (Vol. V, pp. 156–189). Peirce, C. S. (1877). The fixation of belief. In Peirce (1931–5). Collected papers (Vol. V, pp. 223–247). Peirce, C. S. (1878). How to make our ideas clear. In Peirce (1931–5). Collected papers (Vol. V, pp. 248–271). Peirce, C. S. (1892). The doctrine of necessity examined. In Peirce (1931–5). Collected papers (Vol. VI, pp. 28–45). Peirce, C. S. (1898a). The first rule of logic. In Peirce (1931–5). Collected papers (Vol. V, pp. 399–413). Peirce, C. S. (1898b). Vitally important topics. Theory and practice. In Peirce (1931–5). Collected papers (Vol. I, pp. 339–351). Peirce, C. S. (1898c). The logic of events. In Peirce (1931–5). Collected papers (Vol. VI, 6.1–5 and 6.214–221: 1–5 and 147–149). Peirce, C. S. (1901). Truth, falsity and error. In Peirce (1931–5). Collected papers (Vol. V, pp. 394–398). Peirce, C. S. (1903a). Pragmatism and abduction. In Peirce (1931–5). Collected papers (Vol. V, pp. 112–131). Peirce, C. S. (1903b). Lectures on pragmatism. Lecture II. In Peirce (1931–5). Collected papers. (Vol. V, pp. 29–46). Peirce, C. S. (1905). What pragmatism is. In Peirce (1931–5). Collected papers (Vol. V, pp. 272– 292). Peirce, C. S. (1931–1935). Collected papers, 6 Volumes, C. Hartshorne & P. Weiss, (Eds.). Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Peirce, C. S. (1992–1998). The essential Peirce. Selected philosophical writings, Volumes 1 & 2., Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel (Eds.). Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Polanyi, M. (1962). Personal Knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Popper, K. (1956). Three views concerning human knowledge. In Popper. (1969). Conjectures and refutations (pp. 130–160). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Quine, W. V. O. (1960). Word and object. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Rescher, N. (1978). Peirce’s philosophy of science. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Reynolds, A. (2002). Peirce’s scientific metaphysics, The philosophy of chance, law and evolution. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Rhodes, R. (1986). The making of atomic bomb. New Yok: Touchstone Books. Ryle, G. (1949). The concept of mind. Reprinted by Penguins Books, Middlesex: Harmondsworth, 1963. Scheffler, I. (1974). Four pragmatists. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Talisse, R. (2007). A pragmatist philosophy of democracy. New York: Routledge. Thayer, H. S. (1952). The logic of pragmatism. An examination of John Dewey’s logic. New York: The Humanities Press. Wiggins, D. (2004). Reflections on inquiry and truth arising from Peirce’s method for the fixation of belief. In C. Misak (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Peirce (pp. 87–126). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 5

Values, Transactional Relationships and the Autonomy of Science

Abstract The fifth chapter reinforces the conclusions reached by the fourth. I will argue that moral evaluations are similar to empirical hypotheses, which are factually controllable. Without sacrificing the due distinctions, science and morality are different aspects of the same inquiry, since they use the same empirical process and the objective of both is the truth. The transactional conception of knowledge and reality will further confirm the presence of a moral dimension in scientific research. The inclusion of moral values in scientific research will lead to examining the responsibilities of science. Through historical examples and general arguments, we will see why the scientist does not just have a responsibility only towards truth. The last section will examine the problem of autonomy in science. The fall of the myth of value-free science does not pose any dangers to the autonomy of science. On the contrary, it is a necessary step to reaffirm it and defend it. Keywords Autonomy (a. of science and social values) · Convergence (of opinions, in science and morality) · Desired/desirable · Discovery/creation · Ends (ends-in view, ends as termination, ends and values) · Environmental economics (use values, existence values, transformative values) · Is-ought problem · Means/ends · Responsibility · Technology (language as a t., technology made up of physical instruments) · Transactional relationships (between knowledge and reality · Between knowledge, reality and morality) · Truth · Unpredictability thesis (anticipations vs. predictions) · Values (ideal v., see ends as termination, see environmental economics)

5.1

Hypotheses in Morality

The logic of inquiry can and should be extended to the field of morality. This has consequences for all those areas in which facts and values are inextricably linked. In the cases of thick terms, of inductive risk, of the overlap between ‘pure’ science and ‘applied’ science, the objectivity of science is not compromised. Instead, it also extends to the subject of moral values. As I have repeatedly stated, there remain all

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the usual distinctions that we are accustomed to. Without distinctions, philosophical research and the language itself would be impossible. However, these are abstractions that are made starting from the same identical research. In this section, I do not pretend to offer a complete theory of moral deliberation. It would go far beyond the scope of this work and would occupy the space of an entire book.1 Following Dewey, my purpose is simply to show how moral evaluations have the same conceptual form as empirical hypotheses. This will lead me to reassert that natural sciences themselves are laden with moral values. This theory will also enable the reformulation of the dichotomy between is and ought, from which we started by analysing Hume’s ‘law’ and the misunderstandings it generates when used to defend the ideal of value-free science. The schema that Dewey refers to may appear dated to all those who are accustomed to the theory of rational decision-making, refined with considerable mathematical elegance from economic science. In order to analyse the decision-making process, Dewey refers to the ‘means-end’ relationship, and this relationship seems unnecessarily restrictive with respect to preference orderings, which not only economists but also moral philosophers take as a starting point and have made increasing use of. The question is quite simple and it is worthwhile looking more closely at it to better clarify the issues Dewey has set himself. These are in fact different and I believe, at least in some aspects, more satisfactory than those addressed by the theory of rational decision-making. There is no doubt that at a superficial level the language of preferences seems more general than the language based on the distinction between means and ends. Let us suppose that end A can be achieved by two means a and a0 , where a0 is more efficient than A. We can say that the pair (A, a0 ) is preferable to the pair (A, a) or, using the means/ends schema, that the means a0 is better suited to achieve the end A. Now let us suppose that an end B can be reached by using the means b and b0 , and that b0 is the most efficient. Again, we can say that the pair (B, b0 ) is preferable to (B, b) or, using the means/ends schema, that the means b0 is better suited to reach the end B. However, using the language of preference orderings we may also say, for example, that (A, a0 ) is preferable to (B, b0 ), something that is precluded by the means/ends schema, which, and this is the crucial point, can only compare different means to a single end, not sets of means and ends. However, this greater generality is only apparent. In preference orderings, the ends, the means and their relationship represent the data of the problem that the decision-maker has to deal with. This does not take into consideration the way in

1

In particular important as it is, I will not deal here with the differences between Dewey’s pragmatism and utilitarianism, although both stress the importance of examining the consequences. On this see Dewey (1922, part III, Chapter 17). The argument is relevant because utilitarianism envisages full commensurability of the values, while it is questionable that commensurability is required by pragmatism. On the issue of incommensurability in morality, the literature is quite vast. Personally, I found the analysis made by Stocker (1990) interesting and clear. For the theory that rational choice does not require commensurability, see Richardson (1994). Richardson is clearly influenced by Dewey.

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which their selection is arrived at, which conceptually precedes the ordering process. In other words, in preference orderings we have a description of the set of possibilities available, but not the reason that led the decision-maker to focus on a set of possible choices, although this is obviously an important aspect of the deliberation process. Whoever is interested in why we focus on a set of possible choices must therefore go beyond the language of rational choice theory (cf. Hansson 1981). When Dewey speaks of a continuum between means and ends, he focuses precisely on how an agent carefully selects both the means and the ends. In his approach, the initial datum is not provided by a set of preferences, but by a problematic and confused situation that generates disturbance and causes indecision in the agent. It is in an effort to return once again to a non-problematic situation that the decision-maker has to select both the means and the ends. The way I will explain the moral evaluations in Dewey’s philosophy closely follows the process of scientific inquiry (cf. Dewey 1938, Chapter vi). The starting point, also in this case, is given by dubious situations. In the moral field, situations are endowed with all-pervasive qualities such as joy, affliction, sense of satisfaction or dissatisfaction, and so on.2 These are all-pervasive qualities that must be distinguished from linguistic abstractions, as they concern the uniqueness particular to each situation: “such qualities as are designated by ‘distressing’, ‘cheerful’, etc., are – writes Dewey - general, while the quality of distress and cheer that marks an existent situation is not general but is unique and inexpressible in words” (Dewey 1938: 76). The reference to a linguistically inexpressible dimension should make it clear that these qualities are only experienced in a non-reflective way – to use Dewey’s terminology, they are ‘had’ or ‘undergone’ – and, as such, they do not constitute either an evaluation or knowledge. In fact Dewey (1920: 130) emphasises that sensations in this sense are an incitement to act “[they are] urgent not cognitive in quality. [. . .] The discussion of sensations belongs under the head of immediate stimulus and response, not under the head of knowledge”. The evaluation process starts only when sudden occurrences attract our attention and require the reflective analysis of experience ‘undergone’. For example, when the situation becomes painful, or a situation of well-being is threatened by external circumstances, or when we feel attracted to possible new situations (cf. Dewey 1939: 204 ff.). In the field of knowledge of natural phenomena, all this is analogous to when someone hears a sudden noise that attracts their attention and puts them in a situation of doubt. This circumstance triggers the inquiry, the cognitive reflection on the causes and the nature of the noise. In morality, the investigation and cognitive reflection take the specific form of the evaluation of what is desirable in order to overcome the situation that has become distressful or because of the attraction to an unexpected alternative that would improve it. Recognition of the problem is therefore the first step that leads us from an immediate and unreflective experience to the beginning of the evaluation process. Without the formulation of the problem we would not even know what data are

2

See Dewey (1938: 73): “a situation is a whole in virtue of its immediately pervasive quality”.

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relevant or what options we are dealing with and, therefore, we cannot even imagine any course of action. As Dewey (1938: 111–2) writes: “A problem represents the partial transformation by inquiry of a problematic situation into a determinate situation. [. . .] To find out what the problem and problems are which a problematic situation presents to be inquired into, is to be well along in inquiry”. It is at this point that the agent tentatively initiates what Dewey calls an “end-inview”. As we have seen, the situation requires the agent to act, and the end-in-view aims specifically to resolve the doubtful situation that makes us indecisive.3 Through its use, the agent proposes to interact with the environment. The term ‘interaction’ is not philosophically innocuous. The end-in-view is not a purely personal, subjective thing because, as Dewey notes, it represents the proposal of an objective relationship with the environment.4 For empiricism, evaluations apply only to the ends, while Dewey points out that the evaluation requires a reflection on the whole relationship of the means with the end.5 Far from being merely a manifestation of subjective preference, the end-in-view must also be rationally assessed, examining whether and how it is able to resolve the problem that the dubious situation poses to the agent. This can be done in at least two ways. First of all, the end may require means that are too burdensome and costly. Dewey (1939: 226–7) illustrates the case with a famous example, taken from an essay by Charles Lamb. Lamb’s story tells of some local people who discovered the taste of roasted pork after a house fire. From that time, they set about building houses to burn pigs in them so as to roast them! History exemplifies that the end is not something exogenous to the problem, but is always evaluated in relation to the means proposed for its attainment. In the case of Lamb’s story, if the only way to roast a pig was to burn a house, then perhaps it would make more sense to change food. Secondly, every end-in-view is also a means or cause that results in further consequences than what is explicitly established, and these additional consequences should also be carefully evaluated. Let me again just make a simple example. I have a sudden desire for a cake and I decide to go to a pastry shop to buy one. Later, I think about the high-in-calorie cake I have chosen and conclude that it could be detrimental to my health. As a result, I choose a different type of cake or I decide not to go to the pastry shop. Despite the simplicity, here we find a distinction that is important for Dewey: between ends-in-view and ends in the sense of closure or termination:

3 In other words, the end-in-view is formulated in consideration of the analysis of the situation and of the alternatives available: “The proposition in which any object adopted as an end-in-view is statable (or explicitly stated) is warranted in just the degree to which existing conditions have been surveyed and appraised in their capacity as means” (Dewey 1939: 213). 4 In his later period, Dewey, as we will see (Sect. 5.2), prefers the term ‘transaction’ to emphasise the reciprocal transformation between the environment and the organism. 5 See Dewey (Dewey 1939: 212): “The standing objection raised against this view of valuation is that it applies only to things as means, while propositions that are genuine valuations apply to things as ends. [. . .] it may be noted here that ends are appraised in the same evaluations in which things as means are weighed”.

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There is always some observation of the outcome attained in comparison and contrast with the intended [. . .]. On the basis of such observations certain modes of conduct are adjudged silly, imprudent, or unwise, and other modes of conduct sensible, prudent, or wise, the discrimination being made upon the basis of the validity of the estimate reached about the relation of the things as means to the end or consequence actually reached (Dewey 1939: 211–2).

Once again, the end is not determined exogenously or externally, since it is part of the overall situation that has been reached. The end-in-view is surely desired, but it is not necessarily desirable in light of the evaluation of the final condition of the action.6 Nor should we think that the continuity of means with ends-in-view in principle impedes imagining what the end could be, in the sense of the term or conclusion of the action taken (as we have seen there is an unlimited concatenation in time between means and ends-in-view). The concept of end as the termination of an action is pragmatic in nature: the process finishes when we return to a unified situation where the dubious situation is resolved. As Dewey (Dewey 1939: 232) writes: “The ‘value’ of different ends that suggest themselves is estimated or measured by the capacity they exhibit to guide action in making good, satisfying, in its literal sense, existing lacks. Here is the factor which cuts short the process of foreseeing and weighing ends-in-view in their function as means”. Deliberation, therefore, requires a careful assessment of both the means and the ends (the ends-in-view). Dewey suggests that imagination plays an important role in the deliberative process. In fact, he speaks of a process that is very similar to thought experiments: Deliberation is an experiment in finding out what the various lines of possible action are really like. It is an experiment in making various combinations of selected elements of habits and impulses, to see what the resultant action would be like if it were entered upon. But the trial is in imagination, not in overt fact. The experiment is carried on by tentative rehearsals in thought which do not affect physical facts outside the body. Thought runs ahead and foresees outcomes, and thereby avoids having to await the instruction of actual failure and disaster (Dewey 1922:132–3).

Finally, and obviously, the imagination has the task of preparing the action, but it cannot replace true empirical control, which is the only one that can tell us if the endin-view thus elaborated has managed to successfully resolve the initial dubious situation: desire and valuation of objects proposed as ends are – writes Dewey – inherently connected, and since desire and ends-in-view need to be appraised as means to ends (an appraisal made on the basis of warranted physical generalizations) the valuation of ends-in-view is tested by consequences that actually ensue. It is verified to the degree in which there is agreement

See Dewey (Dewey 1939: 219): “Every person in the degree in which he is capable of learning from experience draws a distinction between what is desired and what is desirable whenever he engages in formation and choice of competing desires and interests. [. . .] The contrast referred to is simply that between the object of a desire as it first presents itself (because of the existing mechanism of impulses and habits) and the object of desire which emerges as a revision of the first-appearing impulse, after the latter is critically judged in reference to the condition which will decide the actual result”. 6

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upon results. Failure to agree, in case deviations are carefully observed, is not a mere failure but provides the means for improving the formation of later desires and ends-in-view. (Dewey 1939: 238).

Thus, to repeat, what is desired represents an initial stage in the deliberative process. The purpose of the deliberation instead is represented by what is desirable, that is, by the end as the closure or termination, where this has the characteristics of a once again unified and integrated situation in which action can proceed without the burden of doubt. To put it very briefly, this is the theory of deliberation proposed by Dewey. It is a theory that presents quite a few problems, both of an interpretative and conceptual nature. In particular, up to now, I have talked about ends and means, and I did not clarify where we should place the values themselves. As James Gouinlock (1972) observes, Dewey is remarkably inaccurate in his terminology (and, unfortunately, this is a constant characteristic of his way of approaching philosophy). However, it should be clear that the values are neither the qualities immediately given by the initial situation, nor the ends-in-view and nor the ends as the termination, unless they are identified with (as Dewey seems to suggest) with the again integrated situation. To be exact, they are the quality of the situation thus unified, which means a property of natural events. The reason is fairly simple: it is only a no longer dubious situation that possesses a value as such, since it is the only one that allows the agent to start to act again without the burden of doubt. To use Dewey’s terminology once more, this is the situation that allows a ‘consummatory’ experience.7 This explanation is not sufficient to understand the role of values in Dewey’s philosophy. Some values function as ‘ideals’, for example, values such as justice, freedom, equality. Being ideal, they cannot be considered as ends-in-view without forcing the meaning of the term, since they appear too general and vague to guide the action. Indeed, they influence the action, they help select the ends-in-view, but they cannot be put on the same conceptual plane. Moreover, they are values that, if specified, tend to easily create value conflicts (we will return to the question of plurality and the potential conflict between values, because it is a delicate point, and one that is not exhaustively dealt with by Dewey). In Dewey’s pragmatist philosophy, we can also find a function for ideals. As I have already implicitly suggested, Dewey admits that these values can play an important heuristic role. They should not be considered as ideals which reality should adapt to, but as ways to direct action, by narrowing down the scope of the

In Experience and Nature, Dewey (1925: 9), expresses himself in this way: “Values are naturalistically interpreted as intrinsic qualities of events in their consummatory reference”.

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possible ends-in-view.8 Additionally, Dewey seems to suggest it is the connection of the ideals with the ends-in-view that allows them to be continually refined on the basis of experience, similar to what happens for moral principles and rules: “the choice is not between throwing away rules previously developed and sticking obstinately by them. The intelligent alternative is to revise, adapt, expand and alter them” (Dewey 1922: 165). This point, concerning the continuous refinement of rules and ideals, should be underlined, as Dewey only briefly mentions it. In actual fact, it is by no means a matter of secondary importance. Their specification clarifies the type of conflict they might create and, at the same time, it is a preliminary step towards resolving the conflict. Richardson (1994, in particular Chapter viii) gives the example of the ideal advocated by a convinced environmentalist who has to make a decision about the purchase of some consumer goods. The moral ideal of respect for nature establishes the principle that requires minimising the environmental impact of human activity. However, these concepts are too general to direct the action. That is why they should be more clearly defined. Following the example, this could be done in two different ways. We could adopt the value of safeguarding the areas where nature is still uncontaminated by humans, or adopt the value that requires the avoidance of pollution and excessive urbanisation in areas where human action is already evident. While they derive from the refinement of a single ideal, these values, specified in this way, are not necessarily compatible. In certain circumstances, they may come into conflict, for example, in decisions relating to the purchase of consumer goods. However, the specification process is a crucial preliminary step to deliberate an end-in-view, enough to imagine a once again unified and coherent situation, after carefully evaluating the pros and cons of the choices available.9 All the moral doctrines that concern our attitude toward nature or the great ideals of freedom or equality must therefore be continually specified and clarified in order to enable the formulation of the ends-in-view. As we have seen, it is this process of refinement which makes it possible “to revise, adapt, expand and alter them” at the same time. To be more precise, it is only through this process of refinement that we can no longer speak of simple ideals, but of real ideas that guide the action. We should now be able to understand why it is misleading to attribute to Dewey the attempt to derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’, thus violating Hume’s ‘law’ (see Sect. 1.1). Dewey does not attempt a logical derivation of values from factual premises. Unlike Hume, he is not interested in the emergence in the language of the verb ‘ought’, starting from a purely factual inquiry. Rather, he focuses on the different See Dewey (1934: 30): “the reality of ideal ends as ideals is vouched for by their undeniable power in action”. In this, they are equal to the general ideals accepted by tradition: “such ends in any case are more or less blank frameworks where the nominal ‘end’ sets limits within which definite ends will fall, the latter being determined by appraisal of things as means”. (Dewey 1939: 229–30). 9 Richardson focuses on the decision an individual environmentalist has to face. However, the specification process is essential also for collective decisions. Albeit from a different perspective, this is the message of the environmental philosopher Bryan Norton. See Norton (2005, especially Section 9.4). 8

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phases of inquiry, where he passes from an initial dubious situation to a final situation where consummatory experience is possible, in which the action becomes fluid again and there is no burden of doubt. As we have seen, it is an inquiry that falls entirely within empirical investigation. As contemporary critics have observed, Dewey is not interested in rejecting the so-called Hume’s ‘law’, since he aims instead to replace the dichotomy between ‘is’ and ‘ought’ with the distinction between what is initially desired and what is desirable in the light of experience. It is a contrast between initial desires, which can be short-sighted and impulsive, and what instead seems forward-looking and well-thought-out, which represents what is desirable.10 The limits of Dewey’s philosophy lie elsewhere. Perhaps because of the original Hegelian influence, Dewey does not give due consideration to the potential conflict between values which result from their plurality. In a the once again unified or integrated situation, where the action is fluid again, without the burden of doubt, there is no trace of residual values, knowingly sacrificed in the given circumstances through an unstraightforward and laboured process. Yet, the existence of values sacrificed to arrive at the new situation is evident at the level of individual choice (we only have to think of the many moral dilemmas that are abundant in the literature in moral philosophy) and, if possible, even more evident, in the case of collective choices. This is a paradoxical situation for a champion of liberalism.11 The problem of conflict between values also arises in our discussion. In Dewey, it is unclear whether a plurality of values persists in situations that are unified anew. The value, we have said, is a quality or property of the final situation, which makes the consummatory experience possible. Since the situation is internally coherent, it does not seem possible to have conflicting values, some of which have been sacrificed in the given circumstances. The assimilation of moral reasoning to the scientific one adds further suspicions. In fact, science appears to be characterised by remarkable internal coherence, which, according to Dewey, should be extended to morality. However, morality does not appear to have a level of coherency and consensus comparable to that of science. The idea, often suggested by Dewey, that morality has not yet assimilated the scientific mentality, is probably right (at least for

See Dewey (Dewey 1939: 219): “The ‘desirable’, or the object which should be desired (valued), does not descend out of the a priori blue nor descend as an imperative from a moral Mount Sinai. It presents itself because past experience has shown that hasty action upon uncriticized desire leads to defeat and possibly to catastrophe”. On this, see for example Hildebrand (2008), which is an excellent introduction to Dewey’s thought. On this issue, see also Gouinlock (1972: 137 ff.). 11 The temptation to treat society as a whole is particularly evident in his early writings. See for example Dewey (1888). In his later writings, Dewey opens up to the existence of the conflict between values, but it is a subject that is never theorised in depth. Gouinlock (1972: 331) is unusually harsh on this point, which also concerns the more mature Dewey: “Dewey committed the fallacy of regarding society as a unitary thing with common values. This is an especially embarrassing mistake for someone who emphasized so much the pluralistic nature of national society”. This particularly negative evaluation refers to Dewey’s Ethics, see Dewey (1932). However, as we will see later (see Sect. 6.3), some of Dewey’s writings, such as The Public and Its Problems, are by no means irrelevant for an understanding of the social and value-based conflict. 10

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those convinced of the reasons underlying his pragmatism), but it seems little more than wishful thinking to believe that it should follow the sublation of the potential conflict of values. As a preliminary comment, we must stress, with Putnam (1994), that the presence of consensus and coherence in science is largely a myth. What Putnam argued is reinforced by one of the most popular (at least today) experiential learning models: the Bayesian model. In fact, we have seen how behind the apparent uniformity of the final distribution of probabilities, there lies a plurality of values and this plurality explains how a crisis of a discipline can trigger a proliferation of different and conflicting lines of research (see Sect. 3.3). But the central question is another. In the first place, the uniformity of the logic of inquiry in science and morality does not nullify the peculiarities pertaining to the different problems being investigated by the two areas of inquiry, which is what Dewey himself pointed out since he always tried to overcome dichotomies without sacrificing the proper distinctions.12 Let us go back to the relationship between ideal values and the formulation of ends-in-view. It is the need to specify the ideal values that makes the potential conflict between the different values emerge. It does not result in their ‘sublation’. When faced with a problematic situation, the individual (or social group) refines and clarifies the values involved, a preliminary step to assessing what action to take. The situation free from doubt certainly has value, though this should not to be seen as a single value, but as a reflective evaluation of all the values involved. Secondly, there is a further particularly significant consideration that brings us back to the pragmatist theory of truth. The theory I have defended intends truth as the property of theories that in principle does not give rise to the slightest hint of doubt (more a Peircean than a Deweyan idea) (see Sect. 4.4). This theory of truth justifies the scientific method, although it does not justify the theory of a convergence, through the scientific method, towards the truth. We have seen the reasons why Peirce rejects alternative methods to the scientific method: they are inadequate because they unavoidably lead us to situations characterised by doubt. The only method that gives us the ‘cheerful hope’ of arriving at true beliefs is the scientific one. This appears to be very different from the argument of an inevitable convergence of opinions through the correct application of the scientific method. This theory of truth makes it possible to recognise that dissent in morality can be more systematic and all-pervasive than in science, even though both share the same aim. The persistence of divergences may well be due to the fact that the complexity of moral issues, starting with the gathering of the evidence available, is such as to

See Dewey (1946: 258–9): “[value-judgments] differ from other judgments, of course, in the specific material they have to do with. But in this respect inquiries and judgments about potatoes, cats, and molecules differ from one another. The genuinely important difference resides in the fact of the much greater importance with respect to the conduct of life-behavior possessed by the special subject-matter of the so-called value-judgments”. 12

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make agreement extremely difficult.13 It should be emphasised, however, that even with this concession (which I consider to be most opportune, if not necessary), pragmatism in the moral sphere does not lead to relativism and “everything goes”. It is the reference to the truth and to the possibility of learning from experience that makes us avoid this conclusion. Further concessions can also be made to the inevitability of the divergences in morality, again without actually giving in to relativism. As Misak remarked, research on finding a truth that is accepted by the whole community of inquirers is compatible with the persistence of the divergences of opinion that may prove insuperable even in the long run. As Misak observes (Misak 2004: 190): “(P or Q) may be true for the whole community of inquirers. This is very different from saying that P is true from one subset of the community and Q is true for another". Hence, the pragmatist theory of truth by no means excludes that each one, in their own moral deliberations, may be influenced by their surroundings and also by their own personal history. What it requires is not the absence of divergence, but that the moral deliberation is sensitive to empirical criticism. Dewey sums up this need in the clearest and most radical way possible, and it is this teaching of Dewey’s that we should embrace. The philosophical analysis of moral deliberation is very wide, and surely many delicate problems remain untreated here, as I have pointed out right from the start. However, I believe I have fulfilled the goal I had set myself: there is no clear line of separation between moral deliberation and scientific discourse. The logic is the same and any scientific discipline can have moral implications when the consequences of research directly concern human behaviour and its afflictions. As Dewey (1920: 178) writes: the experimental logic when carried into morals makes every quality that is judged to be good according as it contributes to amelioration of existing ills. And in so doing, it enforces the moral meaning of natural science. [. . .] When physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, contribute to the detection of concrete human woes and to the development of plans for remedying them and relieving the human estate, they become moral; they become part of the apparatus of moral inquiry or science.

The existence of thick terms in scientific language, inductive risk, the overlap of ‘pure’ science and ‘applied’ science, all bear out the correctness of this affirmation of Dewey’s. We will find further confirmations in the transactional conception of knowledge and reality.

13

See Talisse (2007). This form of pluralism is defined as epistemic by Talisse, since it does not explain pluralism through the metaphysics of values. In addition, it is a weak form of epistemic pluralism, because it leaves the problem undefined as to whether moral disagreement is in principle insurmountable or not.

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The Transactional Conception of Knowledge and Reality, and Its Relevance for Morality: Some Examples

It may seem banal to say that scientific and technological knowledge has sensibly altered the reality that surrounds us, and in a certain sense it is. Indeed, today, we are all fully aware that science and technology have profoundly changed the social and natural environment in which we live. However, Dewey also attributed a far more exacting philosophical meaning to this affirmation. It serves to constitute the starting point for the conception of science and reality that he defined ‘transactional’. It is through the transactional dimension of scientific research that we will explain an additional way in which moral values, including social ones, interact with facts and observations within scientific research. Furthermore, we will also deal with the kind of realism that characterises pragmatism. Once again, it is Dewey’s philosophy that shows us the path to follow. The relationship between knowledge and reality is certainly one of the recurring themes in Dewey’s philosophical reflection. For Dewey (1908: 126), “knowledge is reality making a particular and specific sort of change in itself”. This does not intend to deny the “undoubtedly axiomatic” truth according to which “the existence known does not change in being referred to by a proposition” (Dewey 1910: 140). The crucial point, for Dewey, is that this affirmation is far from being incompatible “with a change of meaning in the existence referred to, because it has become a subject of knowing. It is, moreover, consistent with alteration of the existence itself through knowing” (ibid.: 140). These are quite obscure phrases, even for professional philosophers. It is no coincidence that Dewey’s contemporaries have often confused his position with a form of idealism that would put pragmatism in conflict with the realism implicit in scientific research and in common sense too (cf. Hildebrand 2003, Chapter 3). For realism, reality is in fact independent of cognitive activity. Knowledge itself does not change reality. Rather, it approximates it more and more thanks to the advancement of science. Any other position would inevitably result in one form or the other of idealism.14 However, to argue that knowledge of reality modifies reality itself, Dewey does not take idealistic philosophy as his starting point, but a scientific theory: Darwin’s evolutionism. It is no coincidence that Dewey prefers to speak of an

Obviously, I am simplifying it here. Realism and idealism are broad ‘umbrellas’ under which very different philosophical positions fall. However, it is an appropriate simplification given the relatively modest aim I have set myself here: the correct understanding of the specific form of realism sustained by Dewey. 14

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‘organism’ that relates to its own ‘environment’ rather than a subject that is opposed to the object studied (reality).15 Following Dewey’s interpretation of Darwinian theory (a very current interpretation), we should not speak of an organism that evolves by passively adapting to the environment. We should instead speak of co-evolution since the organism and the environment continually change during evolution through a network of reciprocal influences. Indeed, all organisms solve their problems of survival not only by adapting to the surrounding environment, but by changing it at the same time. Dewey (1920: 128) makes the simple example of a clam: Wherever there is life, there is behavior, activity. In order that life may persist, this activity has to be both continuous and adapted to the environment. This adaptive adjustment, moreover, is not wholly passive; is not a mere matter of the moulding of the organism by the environment. Even a clam acts upon the environment and modifies it to some extent. It selects materials for food and for the shell that protects it. It does something to the environment as well as has something done to itself.

For this reason, Dewey speaks of ‘organism-environment’ as a ‘totality’, since the changes of one can only be understood by also taking into account the changes of the other. In its simplest terms, we have just shown an example of a transactional relationship, a term explicitly introduced by Dewey only in the last years of his long philosophical career (cf. Dewey and Bentley 1949).16 Transactional relationships must not be confused with simple interactions. An interaction is a causal interconnection. An example of interaction is the behaviour of bodies attracted to each other by gravitational forces. An interactive process does not change the nature of the bodies, while, as we have seen, the relationship between the organism and the environment is transactional in the sense that through their relationship both the organism and the environment modify each other. The relationship between knowledge and reality is another example of a transactional relationship. In the course of evolution, a particular organism emerged that was capable of expressing its knowledge linguistically. Reality has been enriched by this, as we find in it a new element that characterises the organism-environment relationship: knowledge communicable through the medium of language and thus not simply embedded in the irreflective habits of the organism. Thanks to this new

15 Darwin’s influence on Dewey emerged at a fairly early stage in his works. See Dewey (1898), but also Dewey (1909). 16 Without using the term ‘transaction’ the concept is clearly present also in some previous works. In Logic, for example, Dewey (1938: 40), warns against the possible misunderstanding that might arise from the word interaction: “It will then be supposed that organism and environment are ‘given’ as independent things and interaction is a third independent thing which finally intervenes. In fact, the distinction is a practical and temporal one”. Dewey and Bentley (1949: 108) give the following definition of ‘transaction’: “Trans-action: where systems of description and naming are employed to deal with aspects and phases of action, without final attribution to ‘elements’ or other presumptively detachable or independent ‘entities’, ‘essences’, or ‘realities, and without isolation of presumptively detachable ‘relations’ from such detachable ‘elements’”.

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reality that enriches the existing relationship system, the organism now has a new, extremely fruitful and effective device to resolve problematic situations through deliberately changing its surrounding world. Consequently, Dewey’s affirmation, from which we started, is not at all surprising: “knowledge is reality making a particular and specific sort of change in itself”. From a naturalistic point of view, knowledge itself is part of reality. It is a tool like a hammer or lever (a conception that, as we have seen, led Dewey to accept instrumentalist epistemology). Dewey definitely was a realist, albeit a particular type. Following Sleeper (2001: 92), we can define his realism as ‘transactional realism’, insofar as knowledge is a form of transaction that takes place between the organism and the environment: “knowing is here – says Sleeper – regarded as a transaction that takes place between an organism and its environment, and its occurrence denotes changes in the relationships as existential events, actual changes in the real world”. Transactional realism leads us to a peculiar form of realism with regard to the objects of science. Previously, we talked about semantic realism (see Sect. 4.2). We must now say something about the realism of the theoretical entities of science. The problem that arises is in what sense we can affirm the existence of, for example, electrons or H2O. As we will see shortly, this is far from a digression with respect to the main issue of this section: the way morality can shape the ontology of science thanks to transactional relationships. Let us recall what we have said about how Dewey explains Peirce’s pragmatic maxim (see Sect. 2.1). In that context, we have clarified the way in which H2O possesses a genuine denotation. By operating on H2O, we can correctly predict a number of consequences. For example, Lavoisier made a series of experiments in which he let droplets of water fall onto incandescent iron bars. The result of the experiments was the release of hydrogen, a finding incompatible with the theory that water is a simple element. The main point is that we are authorised to say that H2O exists (it has a genuine denotation) because we can act on it through operations that have the expected results. Regarding electrons, Ian Hacking (1983, Chapter 1) has clearly illustrated this form of realism through a slogan that has been remarkably successful. He says he believes in the reality of electrons because “If you can spray them, then they are real”. Hacking refers to the experimental use of electrons and positrons in the study of quarks. Dewey’s transactional realism opposes the idea that knowledge is the ‘copy’ of an independent reality. Instead, for transactional realism we should juxtapose knowledge with technology, since knowledge allows us to act on reality and is itself part of reality. Dewey expresses this idea by arguing that not only theories, but the objects themselves denoted by science are technological instruments that allow us to link the initial events (the operations carried out using the experimental method) with the subsequent events (the experimental consequences): “The character of the object is – Dewey writes in Experience and Nature – like that of a tool, say a lever; it is an order of determination of sequential changes terminating in a foreseen consequence” (Dewey 1925: 121). Dewey’s basic idea would be acceptable if it were not for the fact that, as we have already seen, the use of the term ‘instrument’ (in itself philosophically harmless) has led him to accept instrumentalism (a highly questionable philosophical thesis).

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Transactional realism is important in the content of this book because it shows us the way morality is able to enter knowledge as a constitutive part of it. According to the idea of knowledge as a copy of reality, morality has the sole task of examining the possible uses of knowledge. Transactional realism opens up a different perspective. So far, we have mainly examined transactional relationships between knowledge and reality. Now we will see in more detail how morality may be a third component of transactional relationships. In fact, we have already seen a transactional relationship between knowledge, reality and morality in the case of ‘thick concepts’. With the analysis of thick concepts, we have appreciated how moral evaluations can legitimately fall within the constitution of scientific ontologies. The case of ‘biodiversity’ is perhaps the most intuitive example, but it is certainly not the only one. In cases like these, as we have repeatedly said, the meaning of a concept is like a technological tool allowing us to solve morally relevant practical problems. Here we will look at another way in which technology leads to the emergence of new scientific ontologies. The only but not irrelevant difference is that in this case the technology we are referring to is not the conceptual technology given by language, but technology in its commonplace meaning, made up of material or physical instruments used in laboratories. That is to say, we are concerned with a particular case of the transactional between knowledge, reality and morality: creating new ontologies through the production of new laboratory-made objects. In the context of transactional realism, it is an issue that deserves to be addressed thoroughly. The idea that laboratory-made objects are products of transactional relationships is interesting in its implications and makes us understand more clearly the kind of realism underlying pragmatism. Two examples will help us. Having presented them, we will comment on them more in detail in the light of the transactional conception of knowledge and reality, and its relevance for morality. We will start with GMOs. The first genetically modified organism (in the sense of the current legislation) was obtained by H. Boyer and S. N. Cohen in 1973. Since then, there have been countless cases of gene transfer created to meet the requirements of the agro-food, pharmaceutical and zootechnical industries. Within the food industry, plants with a greater nutritional capacity have been created that are better suited to survive in hostile environments and are more resistant to parasites. We have a case where practical and moral and social needs, (food production and the development of new drugs to increase social well-being), have led to the creation of new entities that had never existed before in the history of nature. As we know from reading newspapers, the creation of GMOs (which include not only transgenic organisms) has provoked a great deal of discussion about the dangers they pose for the environment and human health. This is an important problem, however, I do not intend to discuss it here. The point is that these new entities came into existence thanks not only to science, but also to moral and social concerns; and, in turn, the study of these new entities has led to changes in society. Therefore, it would appear that they are transforming science and society simultaneously. The second example is the creation of a new type of embryonic stem cell. In 1998, James Thomson managed to isolate stem cells from frozen embryos that were not

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used during assisted procreation procedures. This opened up many therapeutic possibilities, but along with them many discussions of a moral nature about the legitimacy of using human embryos in this way. Unlike GMOs, embryonic stem cells are found in nature and so they do not constitute a new entity. However, it was the moral problems that suggested the creation of modified stem cells. This is a process that was able to create embryonic stem cells, but stem cells without the ability to form a new embryo. As William Hurlbut (2005: 213) states, “there may be morally acceptable ways to produce ES [human embryonic stem] cells through nuclear transfer [...] that could both preserve our commitment to our fundamental moral principles and strengthen our appreciation of the significance of developing life. Such a technique would sustain social consensus while opening a positive prospect for scientific advancement in ES cell research”. Once again, we have the creation of a new object of science designed to satisfy both moral and social needs; and, again, the new scientific object promises changes in society itself Let us now consider the problem of the ontological status of GMOs (or modified embryonic stem cells). Following our intuition, we should say that electrons or the compound nature of water were discovered through experimental investigation, while GMOs were created in a laboratory. Unlike the former, GMOs are seen as a technological product. This intuition is not in itself incorrect, but it hides the many similarities between the two cases, which illustrate once again how scientific research is inevitably also technological research. Transactional realism, in fact, preserves the distinction between ‘discovery’ and ‘creation’, though reinterpreted from a different perspective. It must be emphasised that we can establish the real existence of both electrons and GMOs only through experimental operations that we carry out thanks to them. If we ‘spray’ electrons then we will be able to detect the quark, to use Hacking’s example. Likewise, if we use a genetically modified seed, then we will be able to observe greater resistance to the action of a parasite. From this point of view there are no differences: they are both real existences on which we can base our actions. Following the transactional conception, in the two cases there is both an act of creation and an act of discovery: the creative act concerns the change of existential antecedents (the experimental set up in a laboratory), while the discovery regards the consequences that are ascertained when their existence is still at a hypothetical stage. In these arguments, there is nothing that contradicts our intuition. Instead it should be better clarified and specified. There is a sense in which ‘creation’ and ‘discovery’ co-exist both in the case of electrons and in the morally laden case of GMOs. The central issue is that discoveries require conceptualisation in every investigation. We do not simply come across an electron (as we might trip over because we hit a step), and the same goes for GMOs. The co-existence of ‘discovery’ and ‘creation’ is illustrated by an interesting example put forward by Dewey (1925: 124–5): the discovery of America. Admittedly, there is a big leap between the discovery of America and the creation of GMOs in a laboratory. Nonetheless, there are also strict similarities which should not be overlooked in philosophical analysis. There is no doubt that America existed long before Columbus. However, it cannot be said that it was discovered by the first men

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who, presumably in the Ice Age, crossed the Bering land bridge. These men did not discover America simply because they did not have the concept of continent (if they did not have the concept of continent they could not in principle claim to have discovered a new continent). We can therefore say that the discovery of America took place only when there was a conceptual change, exemplified for instance by the creation of new maps. With the introduction of new maps (as well as the introduction of terms such as ‘electron’ or ‘GMO’) an enrichment of reality also took place thanks to the emergence of new relationships in the transaction between the particular organism represented by man and the surrounding environment.17 This explains the other equally obscure phrases, which we started from. Dewey reaffirms the “undoubtedly axiomatic” truth according to which “the existence known does not change in being referred to by a proposition”, but, at the same time, underlines how there is “a change of meaning in the existence referred to, because it has become a subject of knowing”. There is certainly a sense in which America existed before Columbus, just as the electron existed before J.J. Thomson, whereas GMOs did not exist before S.N. Cohen. However, we must also say that reality itself has changed with the discovery of America, of the electron and GMOs, since it has been enriched with new meanings and new instruments (for example, new maps in the case of the discovery of America). Finally, as Dewey points out, there is another way in which research involves an “alteration of the existence itself through knowing”. Indeed, with these discoveries, the road has undoubtedly been opened to profound changes of existence; for example, through trade, in the case of America, or with the increase in agricultural productivity, in the case of GMOs. The fact that a discovery always requires conceptualisation and the joint presence of ‘creation’ and ‘discovery’ show how, within the logic of inquiry, there are no dramatic differences between the discovery of an electron and the morally laden creation of a GMO. After all, as common sense suggests, we could say that scientists have discovered a particular GMO in the sense that they have found a stable organism capable of operating as intended. If we accept the idea of science as a copy of a pre-existing reality then knowledge, reality and morality can interact, but between them there can be no transactional relationship. On the contrary, transactional realism establishes a close link between them. This is what one should expect, given the role played by the category of ‘action’ in pragmatism. For transactional realism it is natural to build a bridge between morality, knowledge and reality, since at least some actions have a clear moral scope.

See Dewey (1925: 125): “Discovery of America involved the insertion of the newly touched land in a map of the globe. This insertion, moreover, was not merely additive, but transformative of a prior picture of the world as to its surfaces and their arrangements. It may be replied that it was not the world which was changed but only the map. To which there is the obvious retort that after all the map is part of the world, not something outside it, and that its meaning and bearings are so important that a change in the map involves other and still more important objective changes”. 17

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The concept of ‘transaction’ is flexible. Mutatis mutandis, it can be applied to many areas of scientific investigation. So far, we have examined the cases of GMOs and modified stem cells. However, the transactional conception of knowledge is not limited to investigations carried out in laboratories. In fact, transactional realism can also take on different forms. We will now address a different case that I find particularly interesting: environmental economics, a discipline that has gained considerable importance in view of the current ecological emergency.

5.3

The Transactional Conception of Knowledge and of Reality: An Example Taken from Environmental Economics

In general, economists do not like to engage in discussions about values. They can do it as citizens, but as economists they would consider it to be in conflict with a correct methodology. The task of the economist is to understand a reality that is independent of what we desire or we feel is morally right. Even welfare economics, which is explicitly normative, is presented in such a way that the economist does not engage in value-based discussions. For example, it is claimed that by assuming the Paretian criterion, then a certain situation is an improvement with respect to another situation. This does not imply a moral adherence on the part of the economist, who would only be concerned with elucidating the conceptual implications of a value criterion, though a very weak one, accepted hypothetically.18 With good reasons, the vast majority of environmental ethics scholars believe that the economist’s approach is inadequate to safeguard nature. Value discussions must be addressed in an explicit way, thereby clarifying the most appropriate and rationally acceptable value system. However, I do not believe that environmental ethics can offer a more promising approach. The problem not only lies in the fact that environmental ethics is represented by a babel of irreconcilable voices.19 The most interesting issue here is that the vast majority of environmental philosophers ignore

18

This philosophy has ancient roots in the history of economics, but the formulation that has most influenced contemporary economics is probably due to Robbins, see Robbins (1935). Robbins was so radical that he intended to confine welfare economics to a branch of ethics. His successors were less radical, however, they maintained his spirit. 19 There are moderate anthropocentrists (the adjective serves to distance them from economists) and advocates who see nature as having an intrinsic value. Among them there is disagreement as to which entity is the bearer of intrinsic values (for example, is it the individual, the species, or an entire ecological system?) and the extent of their value (do all bearers of intrinsic values have the same level of value or should they be differentiated?). If economics provides an inadequate basis for defending nature, then frankly it must be admitted that the wide divergences that characterise environmental ethics do not appear to be promising in this respect. For an overview of contemporary environmental ethics there is a wide range of books. See, for example, Light and Rolston III (2003).

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the economic point of view or, even more radically, reject it in the most offhand manner.20 I do not think this attitude is propitious. More than a prejudicial refusal, it would be very useful to examine which conceptual developments economics should have in order to address the problems posed by environmental ethics scholars. A transactional conception of environmental economics promises to fulfil this task, thus building a bridge between economics and ethics. We will see this in more detail through the notion of existence values, a concept that has sparked off considerable discussion among economists. Environmental economics represents an extension of the standard economics accepted today, but the attitude to values is the same. We talk about ‘evaluations’ of environmental impacts, positive or negative, but these concepts are defined in terms of the preferences of the people involved, certainly not according to the economist’s preferences. Following a strictly value-free approach, preferences are thus considered as factual data, which must be gathered and elucidated by an observer (the economist) in as neutral a way as possible. Along the usual strictly value-free methodological guidelines, the preferences of the participants are not subject to evaluations of greater or lesser adequacy. According to the Humean tradition, it is stated that the environmental economics, to be scientific, must narrow its field of inquiry to what it ‘is’, avoiding what ‘ought to be’.21 The extension of environmental economics to standard economics lies elsewhere. In the most common cases studied by the economist, there is a market where the value of goods is determined through the usual purchasing and selling transactions. Instead, for well-known and widely studied reasons, there is no market for environmental goods and, consequently, there is no spontaneous mechanism that establishes their value.22 This poses extremely important problems, even from a practical point of view, regarding the way in which we determine the extent of damage to the environment or the benefits that people derive from its conservation. To solve these problems, economists have devised various tools. There is no need to go into technical detail here. In general, we can subdivide their analyses into two types of valuations: ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ valuations. ‘Indirect’ valuations are when the economist is able to calculate the valuation of an environmental good through the price of a market commodity linked to that environmental good (for example, given a decrease in the atmospheric pollution of an area, the change in the price of real estate gives us a measure of the value that people give to the possibility of breathing

20

Clearly, also in this case there are exceptions. One is these is Bryan Norton’s work. See, for example, Norton (2005). 21 I should point out that here I am expressly referring to the mainstream of environmental economics. There are certainly heterodox approaches in which moral values are explicitly taken into consideration. An example of this is given by ecological economics, in which, for example, intergenerational justice plays a central role. However, also in ecological economics, values are juxtaposed, rather than integrated, with empirical analyses. For an overview of ecological economics see the excellent textbook by Common and Stagl (2005). 22 Unlike consumer goods, environmental goods are goods that have the characteristics of nonrivalry and non-excludability. On this, I would refer to any textbook of environmental economics.

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clean air). More interesting, at least for our purposes, are the ‘direct’ valuations, which consist of asking the parties directly the value they give to an environmental good. The method for calculating the value of a good based on the statements of the people interviewed is facing considerable difficulties. To name just one of these, the people interviewed may feel obliged to contribute to environmental protection for general ethical reasons, and therefore independently of the true value given to the specific good discussed in the interview (the so-called ‘warm glow effect’). To these difficulties are added those posed by the distinction between use values and existence values. The interviewees easily comprehend the use values. These are the values that are based not only on the benefit derived from the use of a good (e.g., the view of a park), but also from the mere possibility in the future to avail of that good. Existence values, on the other hand, may easily lead to misunderstandings. In the strict sense that these values have in economics they are values derived from the simple fact of knowing that a certain environmental good exists, regardless of the benefit that the respondent expects from the existence of that good (also including future benefits: for example, the Amazon rainforest is important for the conservation of biodiversity, the study of which certainly contributes to the advancement of medicine).23 This part of environmental economics is the subject of endless discussions, also methodological ones. In particular, existence values have been subjected to harsh and detailed criticism because, in short, it is far from clear whether the respondents satisfy the rigorous categories defined by economic theory (cf. Diamond and Hausman 1994). One could then legitimately ask why economists insist on the importance of such burdensome concepts. The answer is that economic theory wants to be a general theory of value. It is not limited to account books. Money exchange regulates many human activities, but nothing in the fundamental premises of economics obliges economists to limit themselves to these phenomena. In the final analysis, it is precisely for these reasons that environmental economics is justified. I have elaborated on this point because the concept of existence values is the typical result of a transactional process. It is not particularly relevant here that in the case of GMOs and stem cells the new object is created in a laboratory, while in economics the new object of research (the emergence of a new kind of preferences) is due to a change in society. In both cases, the important point is that we have moral evaluations that involve a change in the ontology inherent in scientific research. Increased sensitivity towards the environment has ensured that individuals feel morally committed to the conservation of nature. The environment is an asset to safeguard, regardless of expectation or even of the mere possibility of using it. Many, directly or indirectly influenced by radical movements such as ‘deep ecology’, feel that the environment constitutes an intrinsic good, and it is so, irrespective of future generations. It is still such an asset even if there were no

23

This is one of the most recurring arguments in favour of the conservation of biodiversity. See, for example, Sarkar (2005).

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human beings able to appreciate it. Driven by the very premises of their discipline, economists have acknowledged the transformation of social reality and have elaborated the concept of existence values, and with it they have raised the problem, as we have seen with no easy solution, of devising suitable instruments to measure it. If the changes in social reality have inevitably reflected on the conceptual apparatus of economic science, it is also true that the evolution of economic science has, in turn, brought about changes in reality, both social and natural. It is possible to document its impact on reality by mentioning a well-known historical case: the incident of the oil tanker Exxon Valdez, which took place on March 24, 1989. When the oil tanker ran aground off the coast of Alaska, over 41 million litres of oil spilled into the ocean in just 6 h. The disaster affected about 1300 miles of largely uncontaminated coastline. After calculating the damage to fishing and tourism, the Environmental Protection Agency considered it necessary to estimate non-use values, such as that of existence, to determine the total amount of damages that the petroleum company should pay. The figure, which started at a minimum of $4.9 billion, gave rise to a sensational court case in which for the first time the term ‘existence value’ became part of the legal vocabulary, and which from that moment on it was no longer possible to ignore. The change in economic science is reflected in the juridical reality and, through this, in the behaviour of companies and commercial enterprises, now aware of the economic risks they would incur in the event of accidents. Nature has had an extra ally in its conservation. If today we can hope to continue to appreciate the existence of uncontaminated natural landscapes, we owe it also to the repercussions that this trial has had on the environment. It is difficult to find a better example of a transactional process. Here, we do not have the interaction between already defined concepts and objects, since concepts and reality have been formed and defined through the same evolutionary process. The pragmatists’ approach, then, well illustrates the process of environmental economics. However, and not surprisingly, we can also take from this approach some critical suggestions that concern the direction that environmental economics as a discipline might take. I am referring to the concept of transformative value, which could be usefully included in the analytic apparatus of environmental economics, although this would imply a significant change in its epistemological assumptions (cf. Norton 1987). The importance of transformative values emerges from the finding that the preferences declared are often not very stable, the product of idiosyncrasies that are quickly abandoned by individuals. As such, they do not seem to provide adequate guidance on how to enhance their well-being. Transformative values try to solve this problem. These are values associated with experiences that change who we are, our character and, consequently, more or less permanently, our declared preferences. An example may be helpful. Let us imagine an individual who does not show any interest in environmental problems. For this person, a ticket for a guided tour in a park would have no value. However, supposing a friend, someone ecologically more sensitive, gives them a ticket and asks them to go too. The visit to the park, seeing the workings and the complexity of the ecosystem, stirs up in this person the desire to

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know more. We do not have to go so far as to think that they have become fullyfledged environmentalists. It is enough to imagine that they now have a certain and lasting interest in parks and nature. Although the ticket did not have a demand value for them (they would not have paid anything for the ticket), it had a transformative value because it permanently changed their declared preferences. The example is not a random one because it is a plausible conjecture that existence values have the characteristic of being linked to stable preferences, the result of awareness that has arisen out of a better understanding of the moral importance of environmental conservation. Only transformative values of the kind described can in fact explain why individuals are willing to pay for the conservation of environments that do not have any use value for them. The introduction of transformative values implies that preferences are no longer a starting point of the economic analysis. In order to measure the change in the level of well-being of a population, it is in fact necessary to discriminate between the various preferences. Some preferences are more appropriate in view of the problems that individuals have to face today in the society they live in. They are more forwardlooking because they take better account of the consequences of satisfying the ‘endsin-view’.

5.4

The Moral Responsibility of the Scientist: Norbert Wiener and Percy Williams Bridgman

Scientific research does not always have moral consequences. This is not the lesson we should take from Dewey. Research into the origins of the solar system, the disappearance of dinosaurs, or the properties of black holes has, at present, only epistemic implications, since it only concerns our belief system. However, it is surprisingly easy to cross the line between the epistemic and the moral. Even the simple act of uttering a sentence or divulging a theory could have interesting moral consequences. This is demonstrated by Norbert Wiener’s position when faced with a request he considers morally unacceptable. This decision is in contrast, albeit indirectly, with arguments advocated by another eminent scientist, practically at the same time: Percy Williams Bridgman. It is interesting to see why Wiener was right, to a large extent, and the reasons that lead us to believe, symmetrically, that Bridgman was wrong. In fact, these are arguments that transcend a simple historical reconstruction, since they are directly concerned with the question of the moral responsibilities of science. In the same year, 1947, Norbert Wiener and Percy Williams Bridgman published two articles on the moral responsibility of scientists, reaching diametrically opposite conclusions (cf. Wiener 1947, 1949; Bridgman 1947). For the former, science had to be aware of the social and ethical consequences of its research; for the latter, any attempt to assign moral responsibility to science was improper and would have the result of blocking the research.

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The year of publication is not coincidental. World War II was just over and science was questioning whether it might have had any responsibilities. Robert Oppenheimer delivered the famous sentence in which he stated that with the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki “the physicists have known sin”,24 and it was clear to everyone that many things had changed during the war. In addition to the devastating consequences of building the first atomic bombs, with the Manhattan project Big Science was born: from an undertaking run by independent researchers or, in any case, in small laboratories, scientific research had become sociologically more complex, an enterprise that had to be steered with a managerial spirit (cf. Galison and Hevly 1992). Inevitably, in view of these changes, the scientific community was divided over how to interpret the responsibilities that society itself tried to attribute to them. After many years, the problem Wiener and Bridgman took up is still on the table and an agreed solution is still awaited. Both Wiener and Bridgman were two scientists with great philosophical sensitivity. Wiener, we should bear in mind, first got a PhD in philosophy. His doctoral thesis was on logic, but he certainly did not lack an extensive knowledge of philosophical doctrines which are a far cry from formal logic, starting with idealism (cf. Montagnini 2005). Bridgman, for his part, proposed epistemological theses that are still widely discussed today. His ‘operationalism’ (cf. Bridgman 1927) has exerted a great influence on philosophical and scientific debates. Wiener’s reaction was certainly more emotional than Bridgman’s philosophically weighted one, but they both raised subtle questions that called for reflection. Wiener expressed his ideas in a letter he published in the magazine The Atlantic Monthly (cf. Wiener 1947). It was a letter that raised heated controversies. A researcher wrote to Wiener asking for a copy of a book that was no longer available, linked to research that Wiener himself had carried out for the Government during the Second World War. This researcher had also been involved in a project on the control of missiles designed for military use. Wiener publicly refused to give him the book, admitting that his gesture could appear to be a form of self-censorship, at odds with the exchange of ideas and information that is an essential part of the scientific tradition. It is worth mentioning a passage that illustrates Wiener’s motives (1947: 748): “The policy of the government itself during and after the war, say in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has made clear that to provide scientific information is not a necessarily innocent act, and may entail the gravest consequences”. Therefore, Wiener continues, “If [. . .] I do not desire to participate in the bombing or poisoning of defenseless people [. . .] I must take a serious responsibility as to those to whom I disclose my scientific ideas”. It goes without saying the emotional charge that these words reveal. Wiener reached the point of contemplating ending his scientific career to become a farmer

24

This comment was made, still in 1947, in a lesson held at MIT, see Oppenheimer (1955: 88). The complete sentence is: “In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose”.

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(cf. Montagnini 2005: 168). However, we must not let ourselves be taken in by the exasperated tone. We are, in fact, dealing with complex concepts, at least for philosophers, concepts that we now have to try to clarify. Wiener’s position was certainly not, and probably is still not, unanimously accepted by scientists. As I said, in the same year Bridgman (1947) published an article in the journal Scientific Monthly that came to radically different conclusions from those sustained by Wiener. For Bridgman, the growth of knowledge has such an inestimable value that it requires maximum freedom. For this reason, scientists must be freed from the moral burden of envisaging the possible use society will make of their discoveries. Bridgman’s article had the explicit aim of heartening the community of physicists, shaken by the outbreak of the first atomic bomb. The younger generation of scientists, especially, felt the need to acknowledge the responsibilities of science towards society. Bridgman believed that this attitude was completely wrong. We can subdivide Bridgman’s article into two main theses. The first thesis tells us that a scientist has the sole task of understanding reality. The search for truth (or knowledge, to employ the less metaphysically laden term used by Bridgman) is so precious a good for humankind that scientists should pursue it in full autonomy, without any other moral obligations, which ultimately would have the effect of hampering scientific research itself.25 The second thesis integrates the first. It tells us that scientific discoveries have a potentially undetermined number of uses, some morally commendable, others regrettable. Scientists are not able to know the use that society will make of their discoveries. Making scientists bear this responsibility would mean giving them an impossible task to fulfil.26 The latter critical argument brings us to one of the objections directed at Rudner (see Sect. 3.1). There we saw how it has been observed that a theory is generally relevant to an indefinite number of problems, both practical and theoretical. Despite being in the different context of ‘inductive risk’, Rudner’s critics have come to a somewhat similar conclusion: because of the indeterminacy of the use of a scientific theory, it would be unreasonable to attribute moral responsibilities to the scientist. In this and in the next section, we will provide an answer, I believe a convincing one, to this objection. For the moment, let us concentrate on the first thesis.

Bridgman (1947: 153): “If the human race is such a sort of creature that it cannot be made to feel that intellectual activity and satisfaction of the craving for understanding are goods in themselves, then we might as well shut up shop here and now [. . .]. The challenge to the understanding of nature is a challenge to the utmost capacity in us. In accepting the challenge, man can dare to accept no handicaps. That is the reason that scientific freedom is essential and the artificial limitations of tools or subject matter are unthinkable”. 26 Bridgman (1947: 149–50): “The miner of iron ore is not expected to see to it that none of the scrap iron which may eventually result from his labors is sold to the Japanese to be used against his country. [. . .] if I personally had to see to it that only beneficent uses were made of my discoveries, I should have to spend my life oscillating between some kind of forecasting Bureau, to find what might be the uses made of my discoveries”. 25

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First of all, it must be agreed that the search for truth (or the growth of knowledge) is an intrinsic value, but, as Dewey points out, this does not mean that at the same time it cannot also have an instrumental value with a view to the pursuit of other purposes. The distinction between intrinsic value/extrinsic value is always related to the problem that we have to solve.27 Moreover, the assumption, as it is expressed, is incomplete. From a sociological point of view, the purpose of any research is not just the truth, but the publication of the truth in some journal. It is an action – deciding on the publication – that has consequences. Certainly, the point raised by Wiener does not concern so much the search for truth as publicising a certain truth. When we examined Peirce’s theory of truth, we also saw that there are philosophical, not just sociological reasons to argue that the objective of science requires the existence of a community engaged in a collective effort, in which the exchange of criticism and information is crucial. We must now try to understand whether in certain situations the form of self-censorship defended by Wiener is legitimate. To answer the question, we must first explain what is meant by responsibility. It is a complex issue, but here I can only restrict myself to offering such a vague and broad characterisation of ‘responsibility’ that, I believe, no philosopher of law would have anything to object to, except its obvious vague nature. So I will say that a person is subject to moral blame or praise when they are held responsible for the consequences of the action taken. As we can see, I do not offer a definition of responsibility, since I am limited to linking it to two concepts: (a) moral blame or praise, (b) the consequences of an action taken. Although it is extremely vague, it is sufficient for our purposes.28 A well-known historical example helps us to understand the conceptual consequences of this explanation of the concept of responsibility. In 1939, the French physicist Joliot-Curie was about to publish his research on neutron multiplication in heavy water. He was warned by Leo Szilard that the publication of the research could help the Nazis build the atomic bomb, and so urged him not to do it. Nevertheless, Joliot published the results because, he argued, he was only interested in pure science (i.e. the search for truth) and did not want to be involved in political affairs. It has also to be said that he did not give too much weight to the request for caution, because he was convinced that his research did not have much chance of finding practical applications (cf. Rhodes 1986). From our characterisation of the concept of responsibility, we have to say that Joliot was responsible for his actions. He had to choose between not publishing his findings (scientific truth) and the risk of helping the Nazis, which, he believed, was minimal. He preferred the latter to the former and went ahead with publishing his research, accepting the possible consequences and therefore assuming the responsibility.

See Dewey (Dewey 1939: 214): “The words ‘inherent’, ‘intrinsic’, and ‘immediate’ are used ambiguously, so that a fallacious conclusion is reached”. 28 For a more in-depth discussion on the concept of responsibility, see Forge (2008), who I will make reference to several times. 27

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Should we then conclude that Wiener was right in saying that sometimes selfcensorship is a legitimate option? I would say yes. To understand this conclusion, however, we must avoid falling into the trap of ethical relativism, which is completely irrelevant in this context. There are, it is said, different moral standards and everyone chooses which ones they want. For some, Joliot was perhaps morally commendable or at least justified, for others he was morally reprehensible. So we can say that Joliot and Wiener were equally right. From what I have argued right through this work, it is clear that I do not consider relativism to be valid. Morality, just like science, is guided by the objective of the truth. However, in this case, the acceptance of relativism would also lead us to the conclusion that a moral responsibility must be attributed to Joliot. It is indeed important to understand that the previous characterisation of the concept of ‘responsibility’ is completely independent of the existence or not of more or less objective criteria of morality. What I have said, in fact, is that a person is subject to moral blame or praise when they are held responsible for the consequences of the action taken. According to some criteria, Joliot is reprehensible while for others he is perhaps justifiable, but everyone has to agree that Joliot was responsible for his action. The legitimacy of self-censorship simply depends on the existence of some moral standard as far as it can be relevant. In this sense Wiener’s conclusion seems to be correct. Instead, contrary to what Bridgman argues, we simply cannot say that a scientist, as a scientist, has the sole responsibility of seeking the truth. Can we draw stronger conclusions, which would surely have pleased Wiener? Wiener was not simply interested in defending the moral responsibilities of scientists. He was a convinced pacifist. A full-fledge discussion of pacifism is beyond the scope of this short section. Yet the issue is interesting, since it leads us to Bridgman’s second thesis. While the first thesis deals with the search for truth as the objective of science, the second thesis examines more closely the technological use of scientific research. Let us not forget the role that the explosion of the first atomic bomb had in Bridgman’s thoughts. The second thesis reminds us that scientific discoveries can be used for an indefinite number of issues, both for good and for bad, and it is the responsibility of society, not of the scientist, to decide on their use. Undoubtedly, every technologically important scientific discovery has many uses, some commendable and others reprehensible. An airplane can be used to carry innocent tourists or to drop bombs. The same applies to the atomic bomb. It could be used to kill millions of people, but it could be used as a deterrent and save the world from a destructive war. So should we say that Bridgman is right when he states that burdening the scientist with so many responsibilities would mean blocking research itself? In fact, how could a scientist imagine what use might be made of a discovery? It is difficult to imagine a technological artefact that cannot have some morally reprehensible use. However, before we jump to this conclusion, we need to look at what a technological product consists of. As Forge observed (2008: 48 ff.), technological artefacts

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generally have a primary purpose that must be distinguished from their secondary purposes. A military missile has the primary purpose of killing, an airplane’s primary purpose is to transport people, and a paperknife, as the word itself says, has the primary purpose of cutting paper. At the same time, a military missile may have the secondary purpose of preventing a military attack by a foreign power, an airplane can have the secondary purpose of bombing civilians, and a knife could have the secondary purpose of stabbing. Let us examine the logical relationship between primary and secondary purposes. Obtaining a secondary purpose depends on the primary purpose. In fact, I cannot use a missile as a deterrent if that missile is not able to kill. However, the inverse relationship is not valid. A nuclear missile does not imply a specific secondary purpose, since it can be used in many different and incompatible ways, depending on the circumstances and on the problems we have to deal with. This has important implications for our discussion. Unlike secondary purposes, primary goals are mainly independent of the specific social and cultural context. A scientist working on the construction of a missile knows, regardless of the secondary uses of the missile, that the missile has the primary purpose of killing. We can also add that killing is, except in special circumstances, considered to be wrong by all moral systems. Likewise, an engineer working on the construction of a passenger airplane knows that the plane has the primary purpose of transporting people. And we can also add that developing faster transport is generally considered to be something good. On the contrary, secondary purposes are numerous, unpredictable, and subject to diverse circumstances. Bridgman, we have seen, complains that scientists cannot know what use society makes of scientific discoveries and that making the scientist bear such responsibilities would block research. This state of ignorance is true for the secondary purposes, but not for primary ones, which, as I have already pointed out, are largely independent of the social and cultural context. With this distinction in mind, we have to say that primary goals determine prima facie the evaluation of moral praise or blame. So, I think that Wiener was right in affirming, in the above-mentioned letter, that providing scientific information that helps to build a missile is by no means an innocent act. I have said that Wiener was right to a large extent, but not completely. The problem is that, as I have tried to show, the primary purposes of a technological artefact can only determine a prima facie moral evaluation. There are circumstances in which secondary purposes are able to offer excellent excuses for the pursuit of a primary purpose that involves a negative moral evaluation. We only have to think of the war against Nazism, to which many scientists collaborated with their research. Radical pacifism is a legitimate position, but the affirmation that it is the only morally justifiable position is certainly not acceptable. Incidentally, we can add that Wiener himself collaborated with the US government during the Second World War.

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The Unpredictable Consequences of Scientific Research

Bridgman’s argument tries to show how attributing moral responsibility to the scientist represents an excessive burden, which would result in blocking the research. There is another very popular line of argument that seeks to achieve the same goal. It is known that scientific research has unforeseeable consequences. We cannot know what we will discover (if we knew it, we would have already discovered it). All the more reason why we cannot foresee the future technological repercussions of what we will discover. Thus, the move from scientific research to its technological applications involves a double predictive uncertainty: first, it concerns the outcomes of scientific inquiry (scientific discoveries) and, secondly, the technological fallout of scientific discoveries. Before examining the connections of the unpredictability thesis with the concept of responsibility, it is perhaps useful to cite a much-remembered episode that documents how many practical applications of scientific research are arrived at in an entirely unexpected way. The episode is reported by Michael Polanyi (Polanyi 1962: 9–10), and regards an interview with Polanyi himself and Bertrand Russell. In January 1945, Polanyi and Russell were interviewed by the BBC and were asked what practical applications we could expect from Einstein’s theory of relativity. Neither of them was able to answer because, at that moment, they could not come up with anything. Only a few months later, the first atomic bomb was deployed, which is based to a great extent on that very theory. The unpredictability of the consequences of research seems to demonstrate that it is inappropriate to attribute moral responsibilities to the scientist. It would certainly be absurd to attribute to Einstein the moral responsibility of building the atomic bomb. If we attribute any responsibility to him, then following the same line of reasoning, we should also attribute it to, for example, Lavoisier, a scientist who lived in the eighteenth century. In fact, also the theory of chemical elements is a necessary component of the knowledge that led to the construction of the first atomic bomb. To evaluate this question, we need to elaborate further on what we mean when we say that someone is responsible for something. Also in this case, it is not necessary to give an exhaustive definition of responsibility. It is sufficient to note that any satisfactory elucidation of its meaning should concern the predictable consequences of an action. This includes not only the intentional consequences but also the unintentional ones, when they are equally predictable. For example, if I drive while under the influence of alcohol, I certainly do not intend to knock down the pedestrian who was unlucky enough to be in my path. However, I am equally responsible because I should have foreseen the possibility of hitting a pedestrian in a state of drunkenness. In the example cited by Polanyi, Einstein was not responsible because he could not have foreseen the consequences of his discovery. As Polanyi (Polanyi 1962: 10) observes: “another dozen or more major discoveries had yet to be made before relativity could be combined with them to yield the technical process that opened the

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atomic age”. This is a difficult conclusion to challenge. However, using the example, Polanyi tries to illustrate a much more general point: the scientific community would have no moral responsibility because of the unpredictability of the consequences of research. I find this affirmation debatable. From a historical point of view, Polanyi did not explicitly address the problem of the moral responsibility of science. However, he had a related problem in mind. At that time, a quite common view was that science should be at the service of social and economic progress, and in its turn also subject to detailed programming. This was the period when it was believed that the economy could be carefully planned by the state and that science should have played its part.29 Polanyi was strongly opposed to this idea, both on a political-moral level and from an epistemological point of view. From this second aspect Polanyi raised his argument: scientific research cannot be programmed because of the unpredictability of its conceptual and technological consequences. Therefore, the only responsibility we must attribute to science lies in the honest search for truth. Polanyi was not the only one to put forward the unpredictability argument. Years before, Vannevar Bush (1945) presented it in a more institutional context. Bush was not interested in defending general philosophical ideas. He did not venture to claim that the only responsibility of scientists lies in the search for truth. Nonetheless, Bush equally gave much importance to the unpredictability argument. Bush was an engineer and scientist who was famous for his studies on analogue computers, but he would have gone down in history especially for his undoubted managerial skills in scientific research that he demonstrated in occupying delicate positions, such as the role of Vice Rector of MIT and President of the Carnegie Institution. When the Second World War ended, the US government asked Bush to draw up the future policy of science. During the war, scientific research had benefited from unprecedented amounts of public funds, and the question arose as to whether and how to continue the funding. Bush replied that it was necessary to continue to fund pure or ‘basic’ research because of its precious, albeit unpredictable, technological repercussions. As he wrote: Basic research is performed without thought of practical ends. It results in general knowledge and an understanding of nature and its laws. This general knowledge provides the means of answering a large number of important practical problems [. . .]. The scientist doing basic research may not be at all interested in the practical applications of his works, yet the further progress of industrial development would eventually stagnate if basic scientific research were long neglected. One of the peculiarities of basic science is the variety of paths which lead to productive advance. Many of the most important discoveries have come as a result of experiments undertaken with very different purposes in mind. Statistically it is certain that important and highly useful discoveries will result from some fraction of the undertakings in basic science;

29

I am referring, in particular, to the controversial note on the possibility of a planned economy, a dispute that is not only theoretical, given the importance of the Soviet experiment. Note that Polanyi was also a fine economist and had first-hand knowledge of the controversy. See, for example, Polanyi (1951, Chapter 8).

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but the results of any one particular investigation cannot be predicted with accuracy. (Bush 1945: 13).

Although the argument is the same, we must note some differences between Polanyi and Bush. Polanyi defended pure science because he felt that the search for truth was a good in itself, a value that should be pursued in complete freedom without subordinating it to practical needs. Bush, on the other hand, defended pure or basic science because he believed it was indispensable for its practical and technological ramifications. As Kitcher notes (Kitcher 2011: 101) in Bush we find a utilitarian justification for the necessity of pure science. It is highly likely that Bush, just like Polanyi, gave great importance to the intrinsic value of pure research, regardless of its technological impact.30 However, as a manager committed to devising the research policy in the United States, Bush clearly did not think it was important to draw attention to a philosophical argument that would probably not have affected the general public and the policy makers to any great extent. We must bear in mind the post-war economic and social challenges, together with the huge resources that scientific research demanded even then. For these reasons, though perhaps somewhat reductively, it is fundamentally correct to attribute to Bush the attempt to defend pure science on a purely utilitarian basis. Moreover, this line of argument still reverberates frequently in public debates. The unpredictability argument lays itself open to an initial objection. We have seen how the resolution of practical problems (of a certain conceptual depth) often requires the resolution of theoretical problems (see Sect. 4.3). The advancement of technology is not simply the application of theoretical knowledge acquired elsewhere. In other words, we do not have a unidirectional process that goes from pure science to its practical and technological applications. Instead, the philosophy of both Dewey and pragmatism teaches us that scientific and technological progress is based on their continuous interactions, to the point that the distinction between pure research and applied research must be considered an abstraction from the very same logic of inquiry. Consequently, we should certainly argue that by funding pure research we could have unforeseen technological repercussions. We should, however, also sustain the contrary: by funding technological research (of a certain conceptual depth) we might have unexpected theoretical consequences. Bush’s utilitarian defence of pure science is therefore not conclusive. In any case, it would be a half-baked justification. Truth is a value, and there is no reason why in principle it has to be subordinated to other values, such as the economic welfare resulting from scientific research.

30

It should be acknowledged that in Bush there are also references to the intrinsic value of truth that Polanyi would have shared. As Kitcher notes (Kitcher 2001: 139): “Less prominently, the report contained hints of the intrinsic value of scientific discoveries – recognition of epistemic as well as practical significance – in Bush’s reference to ‘cultural progress’ in the letter of transmittal and sometimes more explicitly: “Moreover, it is part of our democratic creed to affirm the intrinsic cultural and aesthetics worthy of man’s attempt to advance the frontiers of knowledge and understanding””.

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The main objection to the unpredictability argument, however, lies elsewhere, and concerns not only Bush, but Polanyi himself. In the paper in which Polanyi presents the thesis of the unpredictable consequences of research, he offers an interesting analogy between scientific research and the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.31 A discovery, technological or theoretical, is similar to the picture that appears at the end of the patient task of completing a jigsaw puzzle, in which dozens and dozens of scientists played their part, each one committed to solving one small part of the puzzle, fitting together the ‘little pieces’ that directly concern the individual scientist and at the same time taking into account the work done by other researchers engaged in contiguous areas. No researcher, Polanyi argues, is able to predict far in advance the picture that will emerge. A discovery is an undertaking that is based on the work of an entire community, never exclusively on the work of one individual. However, it is exactly this analogy that suggests the limits of the unpredictability argument. As David H. Guston observes, we must distinguish between predictions in the strict sense and predictions intended as anticipations of future results.32 Polanyi is good at defending the unpredictability argument because he assimilates the prediction of future technological achievements to an impersonal mechanism, similar to a simple arithmetic operation where anyone would be able to draw the correct conclusions. Obviously, anticipations do not work that way. When several pieces of the puzzle are missing, only a few people are able to get a sense of the picture that will appear at the end of the game. However, this does not mean that anticipation is mere guesswork, because it is governed by likelihood judgements. If we see many puzzle pieces with shades of blue, we think it is likely that the end result depicts a sky or a sea, not a forest or a garden. Likewise, it is logically possible that research into string theory might help in finding a cure for cancer, even though such a result is not very likely. In his work as a philosopher of science, Polanyi was staunchly opposed to reducing scientific rationality to the existence of impersonal rules, able to almost level the ingenuity and intelligence of scientists.33 For Polanyi, research is based on a ‘tacit’ dimension – we will have an opportunity to come back to this – which has its own characteristics that distinguish it both from impersonal rules and the arbitrary nature of subjective evaluations. It is ironic that in defending the unpredictability argument, Polanyi resorted to an idea of rationality that is incompatible with his own philosophy of science. Even the example of the atomic bomb is not a particularly good one, as it should have suggested a very different moral to Polanyi. As we have seen, back in the 1930s, Leo Szilard was alarmed at the possibility of building the first atomic bomb. At that time, many pieces of the puzzle were missing,

31

See Polanyi (Polanyi 1962: 2). We will return to this argument when we look more explicitly at Polanyi’s idea of a ‘Republic of science’. See Sect. 6.4. 32 See Guston (2012: 368–9): “Polanyi maintains that the ability to discuss the future practical uses of a discovery must be grounded in the most concrete and complete technical understanding – as if the outcome must be a necessary conclusion of that technical understanding”. 33 This idea is already evident in one of Polanyi’s first philosophical works, see Polanyi (1946).

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and it was difficult to make a prediction in the strict sense of the word. However, reasoned anticipations were already possible, and it was on this premise that Szilard wrote to Joliot urging him to postpone publishing his research. Even at the beginning of the Manhattan project many pieces of the puzzle were missing from the general picture, but the potential to build the bomb had become a very concrete possibility. In his historical reconstruction, Guston shows how Polanyi was aware of the opinions of Szilard and Frederick Soddy (another scientist who had foreseen the possibility of developing the atomic bomb). Guston suggests that at the time of the interview Polanyi was by no means unaware of the potential technological applications of theoretical physics, but he preferred to avoid the issue, giving a very restrictive interpretation to the question that was put to him. Years later, he remembered the episode, and adapted it to defend what was more important to him personally: the autonomy of science. For Polanyi, arguing that the scientist was responsible for only the truth was the best way to defend the freedom of research. However, such a step is neither necessary nor desirable.

5.6

The Autonomy of Science

The autonomy of science is a precious commodity. External interference, inspired by values of a religious, ideological, or moral nature, can only impede the search for truth, which is the only value that all scientists, as scientists, must respect. It is this conviction that led scientists and philosophers to found the Society for Freedom in Science at the beginning of the 1940s. Among the founders, once again the figure of Michael Polanyi stands out. At that time there was undoubtedly the concern to defend the image of the pure scientist, releasing them from the obligation to pursue practical goals imposed by the needs of society.34 However, there was also a more specific urgency. The 1930s marked the beginning of the rising academic power of the agronomist Trofim D. Lysenko in the Soviet Union. With the endorsement of Stalin and the nomenclature of the CPSU, Soviet research in genetics was almost reduced to zero, with the persecution, also physically, of renowned and respected scientists, which culminated in the arrest of Nikolay Vavilov in 1940. The relentless attacks against an entire scientific community caused an outcry and indignation, which was indeed more than justified. The defence of the autonomy of science, even more than before, ceased to be an academic concern, to also become a broad cultural and political programme. It was not just a question of reiterating the importance of pure or basic research, but of defending the very freedom of scientists to express their ideas in the light of an unprejudiced gathering of facts. In the most dramatic way, the Lysenko case shows how dangerously inadequate any axiology would be that does not defend science from the intrusion of values that are clearly extraneous to it. The idea of value-free science is congenial to this

34

See, in particular, Polanyi (1951), which we have already referred to.

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purpose. Scientists, as scientists, would have obligations only to the truth, that is, to the honest gathering and explanation of facts. Moral and social values would therefore be extraneous to correct scientific research. We have seen the reasons that lead us to believe that the idea of value-free science is incorrect. We must now ask ourselves whether this jeopardises its autonomy. I think we can give a very clear answer to this. The Lysenko case certainly shows the importance of the autonomy of science, but does not offer any support to the defence of its moral neutrality. What the case shows in reality is the need for a more articulated axiology of science than the one that crassly contrasts the value of truth and the unprejudiced gathering of facts, on the one hand, and all the moral and social values, on the other, irrespective of their nature. In this regard, it is worth remembering the salient facts that characterised the rise and fall of Lysenko.35 The beginning of Lysenko’s ‘scientific’ career is marked by the study of the so-called ‘vernalisation’. This is a process by which Lysenko affirmed that he could accelerate the growth period of cereals. For example, he believed it was sufficient to put seeds in a heated environment to accelerate cereal growth at low temperatures. Vice versa, it would be possible to sow winter wheat in spring by treating the seeds with cold. This process was then extended to cotton, soya and potatoes. In all these cases, Lysenko claimed he had achieved extraordinary success. In reality, vernalisation, a process known to farmers all over the world, guarantees modest results. Loren R. Graham (1987, Chapter 4) notes how Lysenko followed a highly questionable research method. Graham even suspects deliberate falsification of the data. For example, no control groups were ever used to verify the effectiveness of vernalisation. In addition, vernalisation also allows the spread of fungi with the resulting loss of production, a phenomenon that Lysenko did not mention. Lysenko later became scientifically more ambitious, extending vernalisation to the theory of nutrients. According to Lysenko, not only heat, but all environmental conditions – humidity, light, and atmospheric gases – were able to influence plant growth. He thought that environmental conditions determined the dominant traits of an organism. So, once the environment has been ‘assimilated’ by the organism, the traits become ‘internal’, i.e. transmissible. This theory is not only incompatible with genetics but also with the Lamarckian theory. In fact, for Lamarck, it is the use and disuse of phenotypic characteristics that has effects on inheritance, while for Lysenko it was the environmental conditions. Between the two theories there is only a family resemblance, in the sense that both theories imply the inheritance of acquired traits. Furthermore, Lysenko did not even try to explain the mechanism that would enable the assimilation and then the inheritance of the trait thus acquired. How can such a scientifically weak theory become the dominant theory of the Soviet Union of the time? There are two answers, not incompatible with each other. First of all, the CPSU demanded that all the country’s energy and scientific knowledge should be geared towards economic development and the achievement of the famous five-year plans. The days of biotechnology were still very a long way off and 35

For a more detailed historical analysis of the Lysenko case, refer to Graham (1987), Chapter 4)

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genetics seemed far from any perspective of practical application. Lysenko skilfully accused Soviet geneticists of being ‘bourgeois’ scientists who were not interested in the creation of a socialist society. On the contrary, Lysenko’s theory, though scientifically unsound, promised rapid applications in the agricultural industry, exacerbated by the opposition of the peasants to the plans for forced collectivisation of the land. The geneticists put up very little opposition to Lysenko’s propaganda, despite the fact that many of them genuinely believed in the values of the Soviet revolution. Furthermore, there was a second reason. Lysenko’s ‘neo-Lamarckian’ theory seemed suited to the ideology of the ‘new man’ endorsed by Stalin himself. Not only the characteristics of plant phenotype, but the actual behaviour of human beings was seen to be shaped by environmental conditions. With the new economic relations, with the eradication of private property and the power of the bourgeoisie, a new kind of humanity would be formed, devoted not to the pursuit of egoistic goals, but to the well-being of the community. The social myth of Stakhanov, considered the model worker whom the whole sincerely communist population should look up to, was the social equivalent of the ‘scientific’ myth fuelled by Lysenko. More than a scientist, Lysenko was a skilled propagandist who was able to survive even the death of Stalin in 1953. His power came to an abrupt end when, in 1956, he was forced to resign as President of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences over a case of fraud. Lysenko had claimed that he was able to transform a plant into a different species, an affirmation that proved to be the result of gross manipulation. He was reinstated with Khrushchev and in 1961 he was restored to the position of Chairman of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences. His definitive fall came only after his new political protector was removed from power. The model farm, set up by Lysenko on the basis of his theories, apparently capable of an extraordinary level of productivity, turned out to be a colossal scam. The results Lysenko boasted of were only a consequence of the rather obvious fact that the farm was in an excellent position and, thanks to Lysenko’s influence, it had access to the best machinery and more money for electrical power. In addition, a committee of inquiry found that part of the cattle had been slaughtered to enable a better selection, something that had not been declared. The moral lesson of the Lysenko case is easy to draw. Freedom of scientific research and the ‘passion’ (to use a term dear to Polanyi) for the search for truth are essential to scientific progress. Following Peirce, we have seen how the search for truth is fostered through the self-correcting nature of science, in which space is given to criticisms of the facts and the criticisms that come from the scientific community as a whole. Nothing stated in this book intends to deny the role of the honest gathering of facts and the importance of benefitting from an open and non-dogmatic environment. With the Lysenko case, CPSU bureaucrats adopted the strategy of the ostrich (to take up an image Peirce used) that buries its head in the sand to avoid seeing the world that does not correspond to what they would like to see. What I have argued in this work is something very different indeed. While Lysenko systematically ignored or even falsified the facts, the arguments that I have proposed

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show how, instead, in many important cases, the objective gathering of facts inevitably goes hand in hand with moral evaluations. This clarifies why the axiology is rather crass of those who believe that the rigorous collection and explanation of facts (with, at the most, the addition of epistemic factors) is the only value inherent in scientific inquiry. If the analyses made here are correct, it is actually completely wrong to see all moral values as a disturbance or distortion factor. A correct axiology should instead distinguish between moral and social values – such as the ideological ones advocated by the CPSU of that time – that impede the self-correcting nature of research, on the one hand, and the moral and social values that are inevitably inherent in carrying out research that constantly corrects itself in the face of criticism, on the other. In the first case, moral values help suppress the facts; in the second, moral values are necessarily inherent in the gathering of facts. There is a further consideration that shows us the superficiality of the traditional axiology of science, which sees the gathering and explanation of facts as the only value pertaining to scientific research. It is a very simple consideration, which I have taken from Kitcher (who in turn takes it, somewhat paradoxically, from Polanyi himself).36 It is misleading to state that the truth, as it is traditionally understood, is the fundamental value of science. Science does not strive for simple truth, but for significant truths. No one, for example, would be interested in rigorously measuring the frequency with which water drips from the faulty tap of my kitchen sink. The proposition that would determine the frequency would be true, but it would be a very uninteresting truth. After all, we do not seek true propositions, but propositions that are both true and significant; and it is fairly clear that in assessing the significance of a truth, both epistemic and moral evaluations easily fall within it. As Kitcher affirms (Kitcher 2011: 105 and 108): “It should be evident that the notion of significance is value-laden. [. . .] The resolute efforts to ban value-judgments in considering the end of science have obscured that fact that [. . .] we expect inquiry to help us with particular types of problems”. We can add a further consideration to what Kitcher states. The argument shows an additional advantage of the pragmatist elucidation of truth with respect to the truth meaning the correspondence between propositions and facts. For the pragmatist, we have seen, a proposition is true if in principle it does not give rise to the irritation of doubt, as it avoids paralysis of action when confronted with unforeseen problems. Therefore, in its pragmatist sense, truth includes in itself the values with which we judge its significance. The defenders of the autonomy of science therefore have nothing to fear from the fall of the myth of value-free science. We do not need this myth to defend science from undue interference. The pursuit of truth, the effort and intellectual honesty in understanding nature and the world around us have little or nothing to do with the ideal of value-free science.

36

Kitcher (2011). Polanyi’s position will appear less astonishing if we consider that he passionately defended the personal side of scientific research, which includes the personal evaluation of the significance of research itself. We will come back to Polanyi in Sect. 6.4.

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We can, finally, strengthen the conclusion we have reached. Perhaps in an initially counterintuitive way, it is the same myth as the moral neutrality of science that endangers its autonomy. If we really want to safeguard autonomy, we should overturn the traditional way in which we intend to defend it, acknowledging that science cannot in any way be free from moral and social values. Again in this case, we are dealing with a line of argument per se very simple indeed, and for this same reason sufficiently cogent. We have seen why, in many important cases, scientific research requires moral decisions. Consequently, to relieve scientists from any moral responsibility, we should imagine ‘ethics committees’ that take on the responsibility so as to leave scientists free to only pursue the truth. However, this would not be a good idea, especially if we want to safeguard the autonomy of science. In fact, by definition, research involves pushing forward into unexplored territories. This means that the ‘ethics committee’ should check every step of the research to examine its possible moral implications.37 This would have devastating consequences for the autonomy of science. As Heather Douglas (2003: 65) writes: “the more that scientists relinquish their general responsibilities, the more they must relinquish their autonomy”. The moral responsibility of scientists is inevitable. However, this does not mean that scientists are solely responsible. Society can and must contribute a great deal in this regard, by sharing the responsibility for the decisions taken. In short, this is the problem we now face, made inevitable with the fall of the myth of value-free science.

References Bridgman, P. W. (1927). The logic of modern physics. New York: Macmillan. Bridgman, P. W. (1947). Scientists and social responsibility. Scientific Monthly, 65(2), 148–154. Bush, V. (1945). Science. The endless frontier. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Common, M., & Stagl, S. (2005). Ecological economics. An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dewey, J. (1888). The ethics of democracy. In Dewey (1969–91). The collected works (J. A. Boydstone, Ed.). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. (The early works, Vol. 1, pp. 227–249). Dewey, J. (1898). Evolution and ethics. In Dewey (1969–91). The collected works. (The early works, Vol. 5, pp. 34–53). Dewey, J. (1908). Does reality possess practical character? In Dewey (1998). The essential Dewey (L. Hickman & T. Alexander Eds.). Bloomigton/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. (Vol. 1, pp. 124–133). Dewey, J. (1909). The influence of Darwinism on philosophy. In Dewey (1998). The essential Dewey (Vol. 1, pp. 39–45). Dewey, J. (1910). The short-cut to realism examined. In Dewey (1969–91). The collected works. (The middle works, Vol. 6, pp. 138–142).

As Kitcher (2011: 35) writes: “Your goals adjust and evolve as you encounter unanticipated difficulties. Value-judgments are constantly made, and the investigation cannot be reduced to some neat division of context that allows values to be factored out at the end”.

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Dewey, J. (1920). Reconstruction in philosophy. In Dewey (1969–91). The collected works. (The middle works, Vol. 12, pp. 77–201). Dewey, J. (1922). Human nature and conduct. In Dewey (1969–91). The collected works. (The middle works, Vol. 14). Dewey, J. (1925). Experience and nature. In Dewey (1969–91). The collected works. (The later works, Vol. 1). Dewey, J. (1932). Ethics. In Dewey (1969–91). The collected works. (The later works, Vol. 7). Dewey, J. (1934). A common faith. In Dewey (1969–91) The collected works. (The later works, Vol. 9, pp. 1–58). Dewey, J. (1938). Logic: The theory of inquiry. In Dewey (1969–91). The collected work. (The later works, Vol. 12). Dewey, J. (1939). Theory of valuation. In Dewey (1969–91). The collected works. (The later works, Vol. 13, 189–251). Dewey, J. (1946). Problems of men. New York: Philosophical Library. Dewey J., & Bentley A. F. (1949). Knowing and the known, reprinted in 1975. Westport: Greenwood Press. Diamond, P. A., & Hausman, J. A. (1994). Contingent valuation: Is some number better than no number? Journal of Economic Perspectives, 8(4), 45–64. Douglas, H. (2003). The moral responsibilities of scientists (tensions between autonomy and responsibility). American Philosophical Quarterly, 40(1), 59–68. Forge, J. (2008). The responsible scientist. A philosophical inquiry. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Galison, P., & Hevly, B. W. (Eds.). (1992). Big science. The growth of large-scale research. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Gouinlock, J. (1972). John Dewey’s philosophy of value. New York: Humanities Press. Graham, L. R. (1987). Science, philosophy, and human behavior in the Soviet Union. New York: Columbia University Press. Guston, D. H. (2012). The pumpkin or the tiger? Michael Polanyi, Frederick Soddy, and anticipating emerging technologies. Minerva, 50, 363–379. Hacking, I. (1983). Representing and intervening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hansson, B. (1981). The decision game: The conceptualisation of risk and utility. In E. Morscher & R. Stranzinger (Eds.), Ethics: Foundations, problems, and applications (pp. 187–193). HӧlderPichler-Tempsky: Hӧlder/Vienna. Hildebrand, D. L. (2003). Beyond realism and anti-realism. John Dewey and the Neopragmatism. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Hildebrand, D. L. (2008). Dewey. Oxford: Oneworld Books. Hurlbut, W. (2005). Altered nuclear transfer as a morally acceptable means for the procurement oh human embryonic stem cells. Perspective in Biology and Medicine, 48(2), 211–228. Kitcher, P. (2001). Science, truth, and democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kitcher, P. (2011). Science in a democratic society. New York: Prometheus Books. Light, A., & Rolston, H., III (Eds.). (2003). Environmental ethics. An anthology. Malden: Blackwell. Misak, C. J. (2004). Truth and the end of inquiry. A Peircean account of truth (1st ed., 1991). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Montagnini, L. (2005). Le armonie del disordine. Norbert Wiener, matematico-filosofo del Novecento. Venezia: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti. Norton, B. (1987). Why preserve natural variety? Princeton: Princeton University Press. Norton, B. (2005). Sustainability. A philosophy of adaptive ecosystem management. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Oppenheimer, J. R. (1955). The open mind. New York: Simon and Schuster. Polanyi, M. (1946). Science, faith, and society. London: Oxford University Press. Polanyi, M. (1951). The logic of liberty. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Polanyi, M. (1962). The republic of science: Its political and economic theory. Minerva, 38(2000), 1–32.

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Putnam, H. (1994). The diversity of the sciences, in words and life. In J. Conant (Ed.), (pp. 463–480). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rhodes, R. (1986). The making of atomic bomb. New York: Touchstone Books. Richardson, H. S. (1994). Practical reasoning about final ends. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Robbins, L. (1935). An essay on the nature and significance of economic science (2nd ed.). London: Macmillan. Sarkar, S. (2005). Biodiversity and environmental philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sleeper, R. W. (2001). The necessity of pragmatism. John’s Dewey’s conception of philosophy (1st ed., 1986). Urbana/Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Stocker, M. (1990). Pluralism and conflicting values. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Talisse, R. (2007). A pragmatist philosophy of democracy. New York: Routledge. Wiener N. (1947). A scientist rebels. In Winer, Collected works. With commentaries (4 vols., P. Masani, Ed.). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1976–1985 (Vol. 4, p. 748). Wiener N. (1949). A rebellious scientist after two years. In Wiener, Collected works. With commentaries (4 vols., P. Masani, Ed.). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1976–1985 (Vol. 4, pp. 749–750).

Chapter 6

Science and Democracy

Abstract We have seen why the moral responsibility of science is inevitable. However, society taken as a whole collaborates with science: scientists and ordinary citizens are members of a single community of inquiry, whose aim is the truth. After examining the features of a ‘perfectionist’ democracy, I will clarify why it does not represent a utopian ideal by examining the role and characteristics of both experts and public opinion. We will appreciate how science and society are both fragmented and subject to variable alliances. Finally, we will see the differences between this and other conceptions of the relationship between science and democracy. In this context, the essential role of the concept of truth will be confirmed. Keywords Democracy (proceduralist d., perfectionist d.) · Experts ( e. and public opinion, disagreement among experts, contributory e., interactional e., reliability of e., direct and indirect methods for evaluation e.) · Fact-value dichotomy (f.-v. dichotomy and the dichotomy between technical/scientific phase and political/social phase, f.-v. dichotomy and Popper’s Open Society) · pseudo-science · Public and private sphere · Public opinion (see public sphere, see experts and public opinion) · Republic of Science (Rep. of Science and the idea of a Community of Inquirers, Rep. of Science and its two principles of co-ordination); Science and Technology Studies (three waves of STS) · Tacit knowledge · Transactions (indirect consequences of t., see public opinion) · Truth (double theory of t. t, as correspondence, pragmatist theory of t.) · Virtues (v. and values, moral and epistemic v.)

6.1

Democracy and Pragmatism

The pragmatist conception of democracy that I am going to discuss is based essentially on the logic of inquiry we analysed in Sect. 4.1. The reader will remember that in the essay The Fixation of Belief, Peirce identifies four ways to resolve the ‘irritation of doubt’: the method of tenacity, the method of authority, the a priori method of reasoning and finally the method of science. As we have noted, these four ‘methods’ do not indicate a set of rules, but a certain mentality that characterises different anthropological types. We will see how each anthropological type corresponds to a different model of © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 P. Barrotta, Scientists, Democracy and Society, Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning 16, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74938-9_6

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society. The thesis I intend to argue is that democratic societies are associated with the kind of citizen who has assimilated the scientific mentality. The general idea is that democratic societies are a ‘community of inquiry’, where citizens (obviously including professional scientists) have assimilated the scientific mentality aimed at arriving at the truth, meaning the set of beliefs that in principle do not cause the irritation of doubt. As we will recall, the method of tenacity is adopted by those who have an “instinctive dislike of an undecided state of mind”, which means that “men cling spasmodically to the views they already take” (Peirce 1877, 5.377: 234). Robert Talisse (2007) associates this anthropological type with individualist-anarchist societies where people claim that they are able to psychologically isolate themselves from the influences of their peers. However, these societies could perhaps be better characterised as extreme forms of communitarianism, in which citizens seek out only those who have the same attitude as their own in all relevant issues. The method of authority is the one in which the political connotation is the most evident. This method is associated with totalitarian regimes in which beliefs are protected by educating people in such a way that they “regard private and unusual opinions with hatred and horror” (Peirce 1877, 5.379: 236). As in the novel 1984 by Orwell, these societies are made up of citizens whose ideas depend on a constituted authority. The a priori method is the method of those who appeal to ideas that appear to be ‘agreeable to reason’. It is the method that metaphysicians prefer. This is an elitist approach to research, since metaphysicians believe that they have a clear vision as to which ideas must be accepted in a purely speculative way. Such a society must be called aristocratic, since an intellectually prepared class believes it has the privilege of understanding which beliefs are rational. For reasons we have already examined, all these methods are bound to fail. The first two methods will fail because human beings are social animals and cannot avoid coming into contact with ideas and other people that lead them to begin to have doubts. The elitist or aristocratic method cannot work for the same reason, and to this we have to add the fact that intuitive knowledge of a non-inferential nature does not exist. Introspective knowledge does not shield us from doubt when we discover the existence of people and cultures, also highly sophisticated ones, that have different beliefs and are equally considered ‘in accordance with reason’. The only method that gives us the ‘cheerful hope’ to succeed where the other methods fail is the scientific method. This method uses a very different approach from the others: it tries to reach beliefs that can withstand doubts by carefully examining the facts and the reasons given by their interlocutors. Instead of ignoring the facts in order to avoid doubt, the scientific method tries to find true beliefs on which to base actions that produce the expected results. If it were possible to arrive at true beliefs, the irritation of doubt could never arise. Following Talisse (2007), we must see that the scientific method is the only one that is democratic. First of all, unlike the other methods, the search for truth is public. It requires a community of inquiry committed to modifying their ideas in the face of new arguments and facts. It is also fundamental that there is an exchange of reasoning and information aimed at formulating ‘habits of action’ that are able to successfully address the experience. In order to arrive at true beliefs that cannot give

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rise to doubt, no one a priori is to be excluded from this exchange. For this reason, proper epistemological practice dictates that we consider everyone in their own right as a participant in the community of inquiry. Talisse (ibid.: 66) summed up this thesis as follows: those who adopt the scientific method “need access to forums in which inquiry can be engaged; they need to be able to appeal to reliable sources of information and news; they need access to processes by which they can hold their representatives, and their government more generally, accountable; they need the freedom to engage controversial ideas and to speak, write and express themselves freely”. In the spirit of Peirce’s pragmatism, it would be misleading to say that the scientific method is based on the democratic method or, vice versa, that the democratic method is based on the scientific one. It is better to say that in reality the two methods represent the very same method, since they represent the only way to hope to reach true beliefs, and as such are able to avoid situations that give rise to the irritation of doubt. It is important to clarify the scope of what has been said so far. Peirce’s analysis does not suggest that democratic societies must necessarily follow totalitarian regimes (as Fukuyama 1992, tried to claim). Authoritarian regimes, again staying with this analysis, are more unstable than democratic ones, but the collapse of an illiberal regime could be followed by the emergence of another illiberal regime. Nor does it mean that once a democratic society has been achieved, it is no longer possible to return once again to authoritarian regimes. A society, even a democratic one, might prove to be unable to overcome the problems it has to face. In a close analogy with what his theory of truth supports, Peirce’s analysis suggests that the scientific and democratic method is the only one that can offer the hope to resolve uncertainties and free us from the ‘irritation’ of doubt. In the light of historical experience, these statements appear to be very reasonable. We now need to better elucidate the features of this form of democracy, which is identified with a widespread scientific mentality. Today it is certainly not easy to give a general definition of democracy without, in doing so, depriving it of any meaning. The term ‘democracy’ refers to such a wide range of very different regimes that it is impossible to find a common semantic denominator. If in the twentieth century there were regimes that defined themselves as anti-democratic, today the term is used to denote virtually all existing political regimes, to the point where it no longer means anything specific. Nor can we get away with limiting ourselves to the etymology of the term ‘the power of the people’. As Sartori (1957: 16) observed: “From the premise that democracy is the ‘power of the people’, we cannot draw conclusions that are either clear, certain, or usable to any extent”. We can, however, restrict the meaning of ‘democracy’ to liberal democracies, which govern most of the world and which affect us more directly. Having thus narrowed the field of inquiry, we can more easily find some sort of common denominator that is not overly vague. We can, therefore, tentatively assert that liberal democracies are regimes in which a plurality of values and interests are legitimate, and where conflicts are governed by shared institutions (electoral rules, representation systems, division of power, etc.) in respect of the rights of minorities.

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If this were an essay on political theory, the next step would be to better outline the institutional structures that should characterise democratic processes. However, this is not my purpose. What is of interest here is the philosophical framework in which discussions on institutional policies and, in particular discussions on the governance of science in a democratic society, should be placed. The idea of a democratic society understood as a ‘community of inquiry’ clearly falls within the definition of liberal democracy as suggested above. As I have noted, it is a society open to critical discussion, where there are places of discussion from which no one can be excluded in the name of a higher authority or knowledge held by a cultural elite. This means that such democratic societies are pluralistic and respect the right of any citizen to participate in the discussion. Pragmatism however, adds something to our definition of democracy, which is certainly not shared by other views of democratic and liberal societies. In contrast to the liberal conceptions of democracy which is most likely to be more common in political philosophy, democracy in its pragmatist version is not proceduralist. The proceduralist conceptions of democracy accept the citizens’ preferences and worldviews as the initial premise and believe in the need to identify the procedures which enable political decisions to be made, while also avoiding violence. The starting point of proceduralism is the incompatible interests and worldviews that are present in every society. Given the permanency of irreconcilable interests and values, the task of a democratic society is to identify suitable institutional and electoral mechanisms with which to elect the representatives who will carry out the necessary decision-making tasks, while respecting the rights of minorities. In all probability, I repeat, proceduralism is the most common framework of the liberal visions of democracy. The Peircean vision of democracy instead is perfectionist. It does not accept as a starting point the citizens’ preferences and worldviews since it presupposes a certain anthropological type: the citizen educated towards a scientific mindset. As we have already seen in Sect. 5.1, initial values and preferences (the ‘desired things’ in Dewey’s terminology) are by no means a starting point for decision-making because the values themselves have to pass the test of experience and criticism in order to become ‘desirable’. Therefore, it is not just a question of settling the conflict peacefully. Rather, the central point is that for a democratic society to function properly it must be populated by a certain type of citizen. A democratic society, taken to mean a community of inquirers, both presupposes and aims to cultivate among its citizens a very specific set of virtues, viz. those of the scientific mentality.1 I have talked about ‘virtue’, not values, and the choice of term is not a casual one. In fact, it is particularly important to distinguish between ‘values’ and ‘virtues‘. The 1 It is perhaps worth noting that in moral philosophy perfectionism is not usually associated with pragmatism. The European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy has devoted an entire issue on the subject, cf. Laugier and Donatelli (2010). Here, as I have just pointed out, the contrast is between proceduralist democracy, where citizens’ preferences and desires are given, and a certain kind of perfectionist democracy in which all citizens evaluate their preferences and desires in view of the scientific mentality.

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two terms are not synonymous, although they are closely related. As they are generally understood, values are chosen, and everyone must be free to choose the values that they consider right (obviously, this is compatible with the most diverse philosophies of values, from emotivist irrationalism to the Deweyan idea that values are subject to empirical control). Virtues, on the contrary, are traits of our character, constituting our personality. So, when speaking of virtues instead of values, the attention is shifted from what people choose to what people are. My thesis is that, in order to survive, democratic and liberal societies need citizens who cultivate certain virtues or, if preferred, certain values that should however still be understood as traits of the character that are shown in behaviour, not by the choices individuals make. When Talisse comes to characterise what he calls ‘Peircean democracy’, he clearly distinguishes the epistemic from the moral. He speaks of epistemic rules that guarantee rational discussion and are therefore implicit in any choice people try to justify, including choices of a moral nature.2 In this way, Talisse may argue that the kind of perfectionism that characterises Peircean democracy is in complete agreement with the pluralism defended by liberalism: citizens must have epistemic perfectionism in common, inherent in the scientific mentality, not the conception of moral good, which is open to critical discussion and the results of the inquiry. It is not necessary to follow Talisse in the strict distinction between the epistemic and the moral. Dichotomies should always be viewed with suspicion, in the spirit of Dewey’s pragmatism. For this reason, I prefer to speak in general terms of virtues characteristic of the scientific mentality. It is difficult to draw a clear line of demarcation, if not an arbitrary one, between epistemic virtues and moral virtues. Many virtues that are peculiar to scientific research are certainly (and clearly) epistemic: for example, the capacity for reasoning, observation, and systematic thinking. But these virtues are not easily distinguishable from virtues that are clearly moral, such as the ability to act autonomously, without allowing oneself to be passively influenced by the opinion of the majority or, worse, by propaganda. In reality, these virtues, (epistemic and moral), seem to be exactly the same. The distinction is only relevant when the context in which they are needed is specified. Therefore, it is not a question of a principled distinction, but an entirely contextual one. Here we find a characteristic of pragmatism, at least of the pragmatism I want to defend. Distinctions are indispensable but must not be forced into dualisms. There are other virtues pertaining to the scientific mentality whose moral and epistemic relevance seem difficult to dispute. Think, for example, of intellectual honesty, which consists of presenting all the relevant facts and listening to criticism. It is a moral virtue and, at the same time, a highly desirable virtue in scientific research. The same must be said for being ready to divulge as far as possible the methods by which a scientific finding has been reached (cf. Koertge 2005).

2 It is perhaps worth adding to this that Talisse harshly criticises the kind of democracy defended by Dewey, contrasting it to his Peircean conception of democracy. However, at least implicitly, Talisse also accepts Dewey’s position, unlike Peirce, when he maintains that moral discourse falls within the logic of inquiry. And this is the point that interests me here.

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Having said that, we have to agree with one of Talisse’s basic theses. Perfectionism is usually associated with largely illiberal philosophies, as they defend a particular view of the good that should be promoted by society at the expense of other views. For liberals, this is the precursor to oppression. Democracy in its pragmatist version, however, is an exception. To go back to my own terminology, the virtues of the scientific mentality do not in any way mean that all citizens must share a set of values or goals that define what we must understand by ‘moral good’. Indeed, we have seen that, unlike other methods, and in particular the method of tenacity, the scientific method is incompatible with the inclination to isolate ourselves from other people’s convictions, especially when they are different from our own. Instead, pragmatist democracy demands that all citizens have the proper scientific mindset to ensure that they formulate ideas and values that can successfully deal with problems and resolve the state of doubt. Pragmatist democracy must presuppose and defend a certain type of citizen, capable of participating in the ‘community of inquiry’ that characterises the scientific method. Undoubtedly, this is also a particular vision of the good and is therefore incompatible with proceduralism. However, it is a vision of the good that does not lead to totalitarianism and illiberal dogmatism. On the contrary, it requires the existence of a community of people who argue freely in favour of their own opinions. In short, it is a vision of the good that concerns the virtues of those who possess the correct scientific mentality, but does not extend to values, which are instead subject to continuous critical discussion and learning from experience. We can therefore conclude that democracy and science are compatible in the very strong sense that the democratic method and the scientific method have the same basis, they represent the two sides of the same coin, as is clarified by the procedures of any rational inquiry. In summary, the ‘belief – doubt – inquiry – belief” procedure constitutes the basis of the democratic and scientific method. There is, however, an objection, as simple as it is strong. Even if we acknowledge the existence of a pragmatist democracy, populated by citizens who cultivate the right scientific mindset, it is still difficult, if not impossible, for a citizen to evaluate the knowledge of scientists. It is difficult even for an excellent scientist, expert in a particular sector (let’s say, a biologist), to evaluate the knowledge of another expert in a very different field (let’s say, a physicist). In a possibly much more dramatic way, the problem arises for all those citizens who do not cultivate a scientific discipline. The increasing complexity of science, together with the public decisions related to it, makes the idea of democracy as a community of inquirers altogether utopian. This is the problem that we must now address, even though from the outset we are able to reformulate it more clearly. It is not a matter of making science and democracy compatible. The real problem is not the presumed need to democratise science, but the relationship between experts and public opinion in a liberal democracy.

6.2 The Experts and the Scientific Mentality

6.2

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The Experts and the Scientific Mentality

The problem of the relationship between experts and public opinion is not new. Back in the 1920s, Walter Lippmann (1922, 1925) expressed it very clearly, focusing not only on science, but also in general on the complex role of public administration, even as far as to include foreign policy. In all these fields, it seems completely utopian to ask citizens to make rationally founded judgements. As he wrote, democratic theory would work best if the omnicompetence of citizens could be assumed, but in reality “Man is no Aristotelian god contemplating all existence at one glance” (Lippmann 1922: 15). If Lippmann’s analysis of the problem is very clear, perhaps the solution he proposed is less clear. For some interpreters, Lippmann was inclined towards a technocratic solution3; instead for others, his proposal involved separating the technical and scientific analyses from the moral decisions that are up to citizens or their representatives to make.4 Neither solution works. In the first case, it should be noted that technocracy is altogether incompatible with the idea that we need a community of inquirers to face up both social and scientific problems (I will come back to this subject shortly). In the second case, we have already seen that factual issues are not always separable from the value-based ones. The challenge posed by Lippmann is indeed serious, but pragmatist democracy is able to offer convincing answers, at least in a broad sense. First of all, pragmatist democracy does not presuppose that its citizens are omnicompetent. It rather assumes the widespread nature of a correct scientific mentality. At least in some cases, the scientific mentality is sufficient to reject the opinion of ‘pseudo-experts’ and the poorly investigated science they propose. We only need to look at newspapers and magazines to understand how the issue of pseudo-sciences periodically emerges in debates in democratic societies. We will begin then with the problems posed by pseudo-science. Clearly, the relationship between public opinion and science cannot be reduced to the relationship between ‘those who know’ (scientists) and ‘those who do not know’ (presumably public opinion, which naively trusts the opinion of pseudo-experts). The problems to be faced are far more complex, as we will presently see. However, it is best to start from the simplest case to show what the prevalence of the right mentality can do. In addition, we will see how the concept of the ‘correct scientific 3

See, for example, Jansen (2008) for an overview of studies on Lippmann, whose philosophical position was certainly more sophisticated than it may seem here. 4 For example, he writes: “the experts will remain human beings. They will enjoy power, and their temptation will be to appoint themselves censors, and so absorb the real function of decision. Unless their function is correctly defined they will tend to pass on the facts they think appropriate, and to pass down the decisions they approve. [. . .] The only institutional safeguard is to separate as absolutely as it is possible to do so the staff which executes from the staff which investigates.” Lippmann (1922: 206). And also: “the power of the expert depends upon separating himself from those who make the decisions, upon not caring, in his expert self, what decision is made” (ibid.: 204).

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mentality’ does not necessarily equate to the behaviour of the concrete scientific communities, since it has an obvious normative nature also for them. One example was suggested during a seminar. Many people who do the lottery rely on experts who work out systems based on missing or delayed numbers. However, we do not need an in-depth knowledge of the probability theory to understand that failure to extract a number does not increase the probability that that number will come up in the next extraction, since these are independent events. An even more striking case is offered by astrological experts who try to give a scientific justification to their examination of psychological traits by stating that there is nothing strange in studies on astral influences since the Moon affects many events on Earth, starting with the tides. However, no causal mechanism is put forward to explain how gravitational force can influence people’s character. Moreover, we do not need to have any specific knowledge of Newton’s physics to know that the gravitational force exerted on the Earth by the planets and stars is infinitely lower than that exercised by the Moon. Even though I cannot provide any statistical data, such mistakes are quite common and show how democratic societies do not reach the standards required by pragmatist democracy. However, to repeat, pragmatism does not set out to offer an empirically adequate description of the current democracies. Its regulatory nature is deliberately emphasised. The point is that its objective is not a utopian one, since it does not presuppose an omnicompetent citizen, as Lippmann claimed. In reality, many disagreements between public opinion and science could be avoided if a proper scientific mentality were more prevalent, regardless of the acquisition of sophisticated disciplinary knowledge. This is demonstrated by a historical case. In 1950, the scientific world and public opinion were overwhelmed by the publication of Velikovsky’s book (1950), Worlds in Collision. In this book, Velikovsky argues that the disasters listed in the Bible had really happened and had been caused by cosmic events. Velikovsky’s theory was based on the analysis of archaeological and paleontological data and, above all, on a comparative analysis of historical sources such as the Bible, Greek and Roman mythology, the myths found in the cultures of various populations, the Veda texts of the Hindu religion and the Ipuwer Papyrus, an ancient Egyptian written work describing disasters that resemble the biblical description of the plagues of Egypt. According to Velikovsky, the catastrophes described were caused by the collision of the various planets as they rotated around the Sun, collisions that led to the creation of comets. One of these comets passed near Earth, roughly at the time of Moses, creating oil deposits on Earth. Manna, described in the Bible, is alleged to have the same origin. Other catastrophes were to have followed. For example, according to Velikovsky the duration of the solar year went from 360 to just over 365 days because of the planet Mars. It should be noted that from his theory Velikovsky deduced a series of controllable predictions and these were for the most part verified successfully. For example, he predicted that Venus was a very hot planet because of its recent birth, and that its clouds were rich in hydrocarbons, which he argued came from the comet’s tail. He also predicted the presence of electromagnetic fields in interplanetary space. These conclusions made a huge impression on the general public. Many who were interested in the controversy began to doubt the official science (cf. Juergens 1978).

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The scientific community reacted with intolerance and even with verbal violence against Velikovsky. They even tried to prevent the publication of his work. In 1966, the sociologist, Alfred de Grazia (1978: 16), protested with good reason when he stated that the scientific establishment “rose in arms, not only against the new Velikovsky theories, but against the man himself”. Even Einstein, before he died, felt obliged to defend Velikovsky, even though he never took his theories seriously.5 The whole controversy quickly turned into a war between the scientific community and a part of public opinion who criticised the arrogance of it. It was an unjustifiable war that would have been avoided if the scientists and public opinion had both demonstrated the virtues of the correct scientific mentality. Undoubtedly, an accurate analysis of Velikovsky’s theory requires knowledge in astronomy, archeology, geology, and anthropology beyond the scope of public opinion and, taken individually, of any specialist. However, two simple arguments, if not refuted, could have at least given rise to wholesome caution on the part of those members of public opinion who unconditionally supported Velikovsky’s ideas. These arguments are well expressed in the letter with which one of the staunchest supporters of Velikovsky, Leroy Ellenberger, laid down his arms and definitively abandoned the theory. In this letter Ellenberger (1986: 1) comments that “In retrospect, Velikovsky is a pathological case insofar as scientists (and other experts) easily perceived how wrong Velikovsky was, but were ineffective in setting forth a valid refutation that was convincing to informed readers”. The two reasons Ellenberger cites are as follows. First, the verification of predictions is not enough to accept a theory (other rival theories can equally well explain the same phenomena). Quoting the philosopher Wes Salmon, Ellenberger regrets not having understood the logical error inherent in the simple ‘fallacy of affirming the consequent’. Secondly, Velikovsky’s theory is incompatible with Newtonian mechanics (electromagnetic forces are negligible in comparison). In other words, all the evidence that supports Newtonian mechanics equates to evidence against Velikovsky’s theory.6 As Ellenberger points out, these arguments could have convinced even the reader who is not an expert, but, and I add, who possesses the right scientific mentality. While being perhaps interesting in themselves, the cases reported still do not lead us to the central problem we have raised. Indeed, the real issue does not concern the comparison between science and pseudoscience but the contrast between the different and incompatible hypotheses sustained within the scientific community. In the controversy over GMOs, on the reliability of nuclear power plants, on the limits to growth, on climate change, just to name a few cases, the citizen is faced with the most accomplished experts, advancing opposing hypotheses, all with apparently rigorous data and evaluations. Faced with these cases, we may reasonably ask how a

5

The correspondence between Einstein and Velikovsky is available at www.varchive.org/org/ einstein/ 6 It should be noted, however, that this argument was used by Carl Sagan when, addressing the general public, he denied any credibility to Velikovsky’s theory. Cf. Sagan (1979, Chap. 7).

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citizen, even endowed with the best scientific mentality, can choose which expert to trust without having to carry out prohibitive studies on highly specialised fields. However, public opinion in democratic societies has other resources. Even though it is not possible to rationally evaluate an expert’s opinion, it is possible to rationally evaluate how trustworthy the expert is. In other words, instead of trying to carry out the impossible task of evaluating propositions of the type ‘hypothesis H is true’, we can rationally evaluate propositions such as ‘expert X, who supports hypothesis H, is reliable’. Evaluations of this type add further rational arguments to reject pseudo-sciences, but they also have a certain weight in the controversies that arise within mainstream science itself. There are several studies in the philosophy of expertise that show how it is possible to rationally support a certain hypothesis in this way. I can refer here, albeit briefly, to the analysis made by Alvin J. Goldman (2006), which is very clear and well expressed. Goldman examines five methods by which an outsider is able to rationally assess the reliability of an expert, while having little or no specialist knowledge. First, we can assess the performance of the experts during the controversy. For example, let us suppose that a citizen is following a debate between two experts. He notes that expert A is always quick to respond to any objection raised by expert B, while expert B leaves some of the objections raised by A unanswered. In this case, a citizen can rationally infer that A is more reliable. This is the first method that Goldman proposes.7 The second and third methods consist of consulting the opinion of the entire community of experts. This consultation can take place in two ways. In one case, it examines the number of experts who support the H hypothesis; the other examines the opinion of meta-experts who evaluate the reliability of the contending experts. Using a simple Bayesian model, Goldman shows the conditions in which it is rational to use this approach. If, for example, the vast majority of biologists advocated creationism, this would not automatically make the creationist hypothesis more plausible. Together with the number of experts who are in agreement and the evaluation of the meta-experts, what counts is the independent judgement of each expert and each meta-expert. The fourth method involves examining whether an expert has economic interests in defending a certain hypothesis. To this criterion, I believe, a test should be added regarding the scientific credentials relating to the field of expertise of the scientist. An expert biologist, we could argue, is not necessarily competent to assess the merits of an economic theory. Finally, the fifth method deals with evaluating the successes that experts have had in the past. In this evaluation, it is not always necessary to have the kind of knowledge that is within the reach of specialists only. Goldman notes how esoteric knowledge often becomes exoteric, meaning that it can be evaluated by non-experts. Let us suppose that, and this is an example made by Goldman, an expert affirms that there will be a solar eclipse on April 22, 2130 in New Mexico. This knowledge is

7

See Goldman (2006: 21), where the reader will find the enunciation of all five methods.

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accessible only to professional astronomers. But let us assume that the prediction is made on April 21, 2130. This claim would become quickly verifiable by anyone living in New Mexico. We must not give too much weight to the simplicity of the examples, which is perhaps inevitable in an exposition that has to be as general as possible. In an extensive study, two historians of science, N. Oreskes and E. M. Conway (2010), examined various controversies in which the reliability (and unreliability) of the experts could be rationally evaluated. In all the cases Oreskes and Conway studied, the scientific controversies are closely linked to social conflicts: one member of the scientific community quarrels with another member of the scientific community, and each of them finds support in different parts of society. Both science and society emerge as being symmetrically fragmented in an apparently confused situation, where uncertainty reigns. Yet, the reliability criteria of the opposing experts offer a certain degree of guidance that helps to steer us through the debate. The controversy over the dangers of passive smoking is an enlightening example (ibid., Chap. 5, but also Chap. 1). In the 1980s, some empirical evidence began to emerge demonstrating that passive smoking was carcinogenic, a hypothesis that was definitively accepted in the 1990s. The tobacco industry immediately understood the potential negative consequences for its turnover. The harm caused by active smoking was economically far less damaging to the tobacco companies, since, in this case, it could be argued that the risk was a question of individual choice. Unfortunately for the companies, this is an argument that obviously does not stand up in the case of victims of passive smoking. Consequently, the tobacco industry financed their own research and hired leading researchers to show that the danger of passive smoking was far from proven. The arguments used were based on methodological and scientific considerations that were inevitably complex, and yet, without going into technical and scientific details, there were good reasons to mistrust the experts who opposed the hypothesis of the harmfulness of passive smoking. First and foremost, they were all experts who had worked in or whose research had been funded by the tobacco industry. As Oreskes and Conway illustrate, this is not necessarily tantamount to bad faith. In some cases, their support was probably due to sincere and intellectually honest opposition to the regulatory intervention by the government. However, personal disinterest on the part of the experts is a rational requirement to evaluate their reliability (in a trial the question is routinely asked whether the expert witness has any financial relationships with one of the parties involved). Moreover, in many cases, the experts were highly prestigious scientists, but their expertise was not directly related to the field in question. Furthermore, it should be added that, although the scientific community was divided, the vast majority of experts in this sector believed that the objections to the dangers of passive smoking were irrelevant. Finally, in the 1990s, the courts began to order the tobacco industries to make huge compensation payments for having deliberately concealed in the past the dangers of active smoking, which they had already been aware of since the 1950s. This time, public opinion had good reason to mistrust them and quickly gave their support also to campaigns against passive smoking.

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Incidentally, it must be added that the tobacco companies did not try to refute the hypothesis on the hazards of passive smoking. Their objective, rather, was to instil doubts in public opinion, showing how it could not be argued that the hypothesis was conclusively proven. Such arguments are already suspicious. Science is fallible. Even the hypothesis ‘The Earth is round’ could turn out to be false, but the fact remains that empirical evidence in its favour is overwhelming. The argument per se is equivalent to introducing anti-scientific Cartesian doubt in the field of scientific research. It is important to emphasise that the adoption of these methods already requires that laypersons have many cognitive abilities. On the other hand, we have already seen that pragmatist democracy is based on perfectionism that is also epistemic, even though, and this is the point, such perfectionism is not utopian. Public opinion was not able to rationally evaluate hypothesis H ‘passive smoking is not carcinogenic’. However, it was able to rationally evaluate the reliability of those who supported it. The spread of a correct scientific mentality is therefore important. In Democracy and Education, Dewey gives it a fundamental role in the development of democratic societies.8 In this work, Dewey does not deal with the role of experts in democracy (he will do this in a subsequent essay).9 Nor are Dewey’s pedagogical ideas, though undoubtedly important, directly relevant here. The point of interest here, Dewey stresses, is that the mastery of scientific disciplines must be distinguished from the acquisition of the scientific mentality and its method. If the ideas of an omnicompetent citizen are utopian, the acquisition of the scientific mentality is not at all so, and, as we have seen, it is a valuable tool to resolve the delicate issues that concern the relationship between experts and laypersons in democratic societies. Nonetheless, what has been said so far is by no means enough. Although relevant, the methods analysed by Goldman have a limited scope. It would be very naive to think that the relationships between public opinion and experts in democratic societies could be limited to an evaluation of the reliability of experts without taking up a scientific examination of the contents of a hypothesis and the analysis of the arguments presented in support of it. Each of the methods suggested by Goldman lays itself open to objections that limit its strength and applicability. The first method Goldman proposes is certainly the weakest. The lack of promptness in responding to an objection and also failing to respond are not necessarily indications of the unreliability of the expert. An ‘expert’ in eristic tricks would always be able to reply quickly and confidently but would still be an unreliable expert. Conversely, a reliable expert could in all honesty wait before giving a convincing answer. Besides, anyone would have difficulty in responding to irrelevant objections (and, in order to evaluate the relevance, the public would necessarily have to have almost as much knowledge as the experts).

8 As we have read since the preface: “the philosophy stated in this book connects the growth of democracy with the development of the experimental method in the sciences”, cf. Dewey (1916: 3). 9 This is the essay The Public and its Problems, which I will refer to in the next section.

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The second method, which concerns the number of experts in favour of or opposed to a hypothesis, is more reliable, but it is ambiguous. The method is based on the mutual independence of the experts’ judgement, and the assessment of independence is difficult to make without having detailed knowledge of the status of a discipline. Strictly speaking, no opinion is independent, because it inevitably relies on experiments and publications made by other members of the scientific community. This method actually has a certain degree of plausibility, but only because it assumes the independence of the experts in the sense that the individual scientists express their own judgements in complete autonomy, without allowing themselves to be unduly influenced. This is a frequently reasonable assumption, but it must be defended with arguments other than those of Goldman. The third method, which consists of drawing upon the judgement of metaexperts, lends itself to similar objections. In many controversies, the discussion is so divisive that it is difficult to find meta-experts whose independence can easily be ascertained by non-experts. It is a method that is useful to some extent, but it is not easily generalisable. The fourth method also has some strength, but it is equally difficult to generalise. Rachel Carson was attacked because she was criticised for not having the proper credentials (she did not have a PhD), but her studies were later confirmed (see Sect. 1.4). The inhabitants of Vajont, as we have seen, had a detailed knowledge of the characteristics of the land where the dam was built, but obviously they lacked any official qualifications. Even the existence of interests is certainly a rational element of evaluation, but it is not conclusive if the objective is to judge the unreliability of the experts. The fifth method, which concerns the expert’s track record, has proved to be crucial in the controversy over passive smoking: if the experts had already been wrong about active smoking, why should they be trusted when they deny that passive smoking is dangerous? Together with the existence of personal interests, this consideration has clearly channelled public opinion along rational lines, judging some of the experts to be more trustworthy than the others. However, in other cases, it is far from easy for the public to evaluate past achievements without entering into the content of the scientific analysis. The methods suggested by Goldman have some strength, however public opinion in democratic societies must play a more ambitious role. How this can be done is the subject of the next section.

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We have not yet reached a convincing solution to the problem posed by the inevitable cognitive limitations of citizens, including those who cultivate the scientific mentality characterising the perfectionist conception of democracy.

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Indeed, there is no doubt that in many controversies with broad and serious social implications there are no experts whose scientific reliability is clearly superior to that of their counterparts. In these cases it seems necessary to turn to what Goldman has called ‘direct arguments’. In other words, it is necessary to go into the details, the content, of the scientific inquiry. To put the problem in the right perspective, we will have to refer once again to the philosophy of expertise and in particular to the distinction between ‘contributory experts‘ and ‘interactional experts‘. To the philosophy of expertise, we should add Dewey’s analysis of the public sphere in democratic societies. Thanks to the philosophy of expertise and to Dewey, we will understand how it is possible in principle to overcome the inevitable cognitive limits of citizens. However, we will also see the challenges, certainly very demanding ones, that democratic societies have to face when examining the relationship between experts on the one hand and the laypersons on the other. In the past, Dewey’s theory of democracy enjoyed considerable prestige. The opinion of the historian H. S. Commager (1950: 100) is frequently quoted: “It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that for a generation no major issue was clarified until Dewey had spoken”. Today, the situation is different, and to many, the theory of democracy that Dewey proposed appears to be irremediably dated. However, it is my intention here to further explore a specific aspect of his theory, which seems entirely coherent with the vision of democracy outlined so far: the idea that democracy is a social inquiry based on the scientific method. It is through this idea that Dewey comes to define the role of public opinion. To clarify the characteristic of Deweyan thought we are interested in, we need to start from the way he formulates the distinction between public sphere and private sphere. Some transactions have a specifically private character, in the sense that their consequences mostly concern the contractors only. The trading of a commodity has appreciable consequences only for the seller and the buyer. In theory, because of the price mechanism, it would have more far-reaching implications, but we must frankly admit that they are negligible. The situation is not always of this kind. In other cases, we have transactions whose indirect consequences have a strong impact on much wider groups than the contractors. Though Dewey deals mainly with cases pertaining to social policies and public administration, it should be obvious that the distinction is also relevant for science, as many scientific decisions have the kind of indirect consequences that Dewey found. Scientific and technological advances indeed have an enormous impact on society and the economy. Once, there was considerable optimism about the connection between scientific and social progress. At the time of positivism, it was even assumed that scientific progress was inevitably followed by social progress. An excellent example of this optimism was offered, at the end of the nineteenth century, by the Ballo Excelsior, an opera that was intended to

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represent the triumph of science over prejudices.10 Today, however, a more pessimistic, even gloomy vision of scientific and technological progress is quite common. Bertrand Russell, for example, believed that moral awareness would not be able to keep up with the responsibilities that the new knowledge involves.11 The anti-science movements find justification precisely in this fear. In any case, optimists and pessimists share the assertion that scientific research has wide-ranging indirect consequences, in the sense Dewey intended. The public sphere, then, comprises all those transactions that have wide-ranging indirect consequences. However, the existence of a public sphere does not necessarily imply the emergence of a body of public opinion. Certain conditions are required. Together with the possibility to form associations to defend common values and interests, there needs to be an awareness of the existence of indirect consequences on the part of at least some of the people involved. As Dewey (1927: 353) writes, a democratic society “demands [. . .] perception of the consequences of a joint activity and of the distinctive share of each element in producing it. Such perception creates a common interest.” Dewey was concerned that the advent of the Great Society would hinder the process of awareness, which is a necessary prerequisite for constituting public opinion. Compared to the small local communities that have been steadily decreasing in importance, the Great Society “has so enormously expanded, multiplied, intensified and complicated the scope of the indirect consequences, has formed such immense and consolidated unions in action, on an impersonal rather than community basis, that the resultant public cannot identify and distinguish itself” (ibid.: 314). We will shortly return to this problem. At present, it is enough to note that the creation of public opinion does not require that all citizens are able to be informed in great detail about all issues of public concern. It is sufficient that a part of society is both aware and well informed of some of the indirect consequences that contribute to defining the public sphere; most likely those who are involved according to their own values and interests, and who acquire the skills needed to interact effectively with the experts. At the moment, these observations may seem to be rather vague, but they will soon be clarified thoroughly, I believe, using a historical case. But we must first explain the difference between ‘contributory expert’ and ‘interactional expert’. In the philosophy of expertise, it is important to distinguish between experts able to contribute to the growth of a discipline (‘contributory experts‘) and experts who, while not having the skills acquired through hands-on practical experience in

This is a ballet based on the music of Romualdo Marenco, which was first performed at the Teatro della Scala in Milan at the end of the nineteenth century. The idea of the ballet was to represent the triumph of science and technology over obscurantism and prejudices. Ignorance was attacked and beat in retreat, until the final stage, where the triumphal music marked the victory of science. 11 As Russell (1954: 211) writes: “Every increase of skill demands, if it is to produce an increase and not a diminution of human happiness, a correlative increase of wisdom. There has been during the last hundred and fifty years an unprecedented increase of skill, and there is no sign that the pace of this increase is slackening. But there has not been even the slightest increase of wisdom”. 10

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laboratories, are able to skilfully master the language of a discipline (‘interactional experts’). This distinction was devised primarily by Harry Collins, who underlines that the philosophical foundation of this distinction is given by the different role played by ‘tacit knowledge‘, i.e., from knowledge acquired through practice and not fully formalised in rules, procedures or protocols (cf. Collins 2010; Collins and Evans 2007). Tacit knowledge is omnipervasive. Michael Polanyi (1962a, Chap. 5), to whom we owe the very concept of tacit knowledge, has shown that even in the rules with which objects are denoted by a word, there is a tacit component that cannot quite be expressed through language. However, the kind of tacit knowledge we are most interested in here is represented by practical skills that relate to both daily activities and scientific activities such as carrying out a protocol in a lab or an experiment. Think about, and this is one of Polanyi’s favourite examples (ibid.: 49 ff.), the ability to ride a bicycle. Few would be able to specify the physical laws that allow us to ride a bicycle. We could certainly determine some general principles that allow us to understand the movements we make when we cycle, but they do not cover all the practical knowledge that we have assimilated and that allows us to do this activity successfully. The same must be said for the activities that are carried out in a laboratory. Consider the way in which the accuracy of laboratory experiments is checked. An experiment often has to be repeated many times, but this is not due to scientists’ faith in Humean inductivism. Rather, published experimental protocols never exhaustively dictate all the actions that must be performed. Full knowledge is acquired through continuous laboratory practice, gained in the early years of professional training and continually refined in the light of new experiments. As Polanyi wrote (1946: 16–7) back in the forties, both the rules of verification or confirmation and the rules of falsification require a good deal of personal judgement when they are applied. We could perhaps summarise Polanyi’s basic idea in this way: (a) we know much more than we can express; and (b) the tacit dimension of knowledge is acquired slowly by imitating masters and thanks to the tradition in which we are immersed. Polanyi’s analysis has immediate consequences in the philosophy of expertise. For a layperson it is practically impossible to possess the knowledge of an expert because it is acquired slowly through scientific practice, not simply by reading a good textbook. Tacit knowledge seems to be a formidable barrier for a layperson to evaluate the knowledge of an expert. However, despite the fact that a layperson is rarely able to attain the same knowledge as the expert, tacit knowledge does not preclude the possibility of fruitful interaction between expert and non-expert. Thus, we have come to appreciate the importance of the distinction between ‘contributory experts‘ and ‘interactional experts‘. Contributory experts possess the tacit knowledge needed to do research independently in a given field of inquiry. Interactional experts, on the other hand, do not have the necessary tacit knowledge to carry out research independently. In this sense, their knowledge is parasitic in

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comparison with the knowledge of the contributory experts. However, it is possible for them in principle to acquire the relevant knowledge, linguistically expressed, to interact with the contributory experts. Collins and Evans (2007: 31) defend the “strong interactional hypothesis”, according to which “the level of fluency in the language of a domain that can be attained by someone who is only an interactional expert is indistinguishable from that which can be attained by a full-blown contributory expert”. Collins and Evans speak cautiously of a hypothesis. However, it is undoubtedly a plausible hypothesis, especially if we omit the criterion of the absolute indistinguishability of linguistic fluency. Without interactional knowledge, it would be difficult to understand the skills of scientific journalists and writers, of sociologists and philosophers of science, and also of the managers in charge of large laboratories where researchers work, whose specialisations are very different indeed from those of the managers. If Collins and Evans’ hypothesis is correct, we can understand how public opinion is able to interact with the experts. When the indirect consequences, as Dewey intends it, are consciously felt by at least a part of society, the result is the creation of a body of public opinion that, while unable to acquire the complete contributory experience, is in principle able to attain the interactional, linguistic knowledge that enables them to make an informed assessment of the opinions of experts with conflicting views. Obviously, we must not assume that public opinion reaches unequivocal conclusions, even if the conditions set down by perfectionism typical of pragmatism defended here are satisfied. This is probably conceivable if in a controversy we can detect pseudo-scientific beliefs or the presence of incompetent experts. However, in other cases the same public opinion will split into separate groups, each supporting different members of the scientific community. It is in these cases that science and society both appear fragmented in the most unequivocal way, since scientific controversies also take on the form of social conflicts. If the analysis of this book is correct, there is nothing surprising in this phenomenon. Given the coexistence of facts and values within scientific research, it would be rather surprising if scientific controversies did not spill over into social conflicts. Science and society are not two separate, opposing blocks, but rather they are part of a single community of inquiry whose objective is the truth, in the pragmatist sense of beliefs which in principle do not create the ‘irritation of doubt’. It would be a great mistake to underestimate the importance of interactional competence on the part of public opinion. We have said that interactional competence is not autonomous, as it always depends on the existence of specialists who have acquired the necessary tacit knowledge. However, in some cases this does not mean that interactional experts cannot evaluate the opinions of specialists, to the point that they are also able to make a contribution to the knowledge of the contributory experts. The reason is that expressed knowledge plays an indispensable reflective and critical role. It is also thanks to linguistically expressed knowledge that

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a practice can be criticised and perhaps improved.12 A cyclist or swimmer can learn a lot from the advice given to them, a young researcher can learn a great deal from reading a good textbook and, mutatis mutandis, contributory experts can learn from the criticisms they receive from the interactional experts. A historical example shows how this is possible. In the 1980s, when the first drugs to cure AIDS were discovered, the vast majority of researchers were in favour of strictly following the rules needed to market the drug. The situation changed with the setting up of associations alarmed at the growing number of deaths caused by the HIV virus (the largest was the group ACT UP - AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). Associations asked for greater flexibility in the implementation of trial protocols and more rapid marketing of potentially beneficial drugs. To achieve this goal, the activists became remarkably competent in the language and concepts of biomedical research. Steven Epstein (1996: 231) documents how the activists themselves used the metaphor of a “foreign language” that allowed them to engage in talks with the scientific community. Except for a minority, the associations did not believe in alternative science. Instead, their objective was to improve mainstream science, making it more effective in the fight against AIDS. Despite initial diffidence, in the end the activists achieved some important and valid successes. The scientist who discovered HIV, Robert Gallo, was impressed by the detailed knowledge the activists had, and acknowledged the soundness of some of their criticisms. The influence of the activists was felt both in basic research and, even more so, in clinical research. Regarding basic research, Epstein documents how the associations helped to overcome the excessive specialism of researchers, who were sometimes unaware of the importance of the findings obtained by scientists of other specialties. It is evident that this role already requires a considerably high level of knowledge about the research, something that was also recognised, as we have said, by leading scientists. The role of the associations in clinical research was even more visible. Monitoring of drug efficacy was introduced following rigorous protocols that required patients to be as homogeneous as possible, and the implementation of the doubleblind system. Some patients were also given a placebo for long periods, which prevented them where possible from taking any medication, including those needed for other illnesses. For the activists this meant killing thousands of people in the name of stringent research. In their campaigns, they were also able to take advantage of the divisions within science: if researchers working at universities were in favour of controls that comply with the statistical logic, first-line doctors in patient care showed clear sympathies for the activists’ objections.

12

On these issues, see also the ideas of Michael Oakeshott, an author who has been curiously ignored by the literature on the philosophy of expertise, perhaps because the field he was primarily interested in was political philosophy, not philosophy of science. On Oakeshott, see in particular Oakeshott (1991).

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An initial success was achieved in convincing the Food and Drug Administration to accept the number of T lymphocytes as a marker of drug efficacy. This accelerated the marketing of the first experimental drugs. Another case that Epstein highlighted is even more interesting. Patients are not guinea pigs. When they heard about a drug in the experimental stage, the patients undergoing clinical trials did everything they could to access it, thus jeopardising the stringency of the control. It was also thanks to a better direct knowledge of the psychological conditions of patients by the activists that the experimental protocols were improved (cf. Epstein: 250 ff.). This case shows how the formation of public opinion can surpass the cognitive limits of citizens. Obviously, with the exception of a few, no activist became a contributory scientist able to carry out research independently. For this, they did not have the necessary knowledge acquired through a long period of laboratory work. However, the activists of the associations that formed to fight AIDS acquired an interactional knowledge that was adequate not only to fully understand the ongoing research, but also to influence it. It must be acknowledged, however, that the case Epstein studied is particular. It was possible then for a sufficiently well-prepared body of public opinion to form because the consequences of AIDS were dramatic and easily perceived. In addition, at the beginning, AIDS was especially common among homosexuals, who already had a strong sense of identity. This is not always the case. Often, scientific and technological research has far-reaching and not immediately perceptible consequences. In many circumstances, as in the case of GMOs and nuclear power plants, we see the emergence of public opinion, but it is rare to find the impressive ability to interact with the scientific community as demonstrated by the activists of the associations that formed to fight AIDS. Difficulties are felt especially in incidents of a clamorous failure of the necessary communication between the scientific community and public opinion. The example of Vajont is a confirmation of this. In this case, it was difficult to imagine interactional knowledge emerging from public opinion, as it was made up of villagers and mountain folk, all people with low levels of education. Nonetheless, communication was really necessary. In fact, the locals possessed a kind of knowledge that the scientists did not. The scientists acted as if their knowledge could be applied without listening to the voice of the inhabitants, and this was their mistake. As we have seen, even sophisticated scientific knowledge needs relevance judgements to assess the risks associated with applying it. In the case of Vajont, a detailed knowledge of local facts and circumstances (the geological features of the valley slopes) was necessary. The local inhabitants were in possession of this knowledge, albeit in different ways with respect to those of mainstream science; while, at least at the beginning, the scientists were not. As I have already said (see Sect. 3.5), the locals had highly specialised knowledge. They were indeed experts, even though their knowledge was not certified. If there is a moral to be drawn from the Vajont disaster, it would be that it is wrong to leave the burden of communication to public opinion alone. This is also the responsibility of scientists. In the case of Vajont, mainstream science could have involved the local community in the decisions if it had wanted to. It is in the interests of the scientific community itself.

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This is a very serious challenge to the setting up of a community of inquirers. However, it is more of a sociological and institutional problem than a strictly philosophical one. This does not mean that I wish to minimise it. On the contrary, it should be stressed that identifying institutions capable of resolving the relationship between science and society is a fundamental issue for democracy. Rather, what I mean is that what has been said seems sufficient to absolve pragmatist democracy of the accusation of being utopian, and this is, I recall, the objection that we originally set ourselves. We must now examine more closely the foundations of the ‘community of inquirers’ proposed by the type of pragmatism I intend to defend here.

6.4

A Community of Inquirers

The distinction between tacit knowledge, typical of contributory experts, and interactional knowledge plays an essential role in the thesis that scientists and laypersons together form a single community of inquiry whose objective is the truth. In itself, it is a distinction that is perfectly compatible with the ideas advocated at length by Polanyi, who discovered tacit knowledge or, at least, brought it to the attention of scholars. As we will shortly see, we can also argue that it is to a large extent implicit in a key idea of his philosophy. In the distinction between tacit and interactional knowledge, there is nothing that Polanyi could have objected to. Nevertheless, it is its conceptual consequences that were to greatly surprise him. There is an irony here that only the history of ideas can sometimes imagine. Polanyi was a staunch supporter of an elitist vision of scientific research, yet against his own intentions, Polanyi’s philosophy leads us to accept a completely anti-elitist conception. The discovery of a tacit dimension of knowledge plays a very wide-ranging role in Polanyi’s philosophy. Although many philosophers of science have not noted it, for Polanyi this dimension of knowledge had consequences that also concerned the understanding of religious experience. As he writes in Personal Knowledge, “God cannot be observed, any more than truth or beauty can be observed. [. . .] All these, like God, are things which can be apprehended only serving them. The words ‘God exists’ are not, therefore, a statement of fact, such as ‘snow is white’, but an accreditive statement, such as ‘“snow is white” is true’” (Polanyi 1962a: 279–80). It is certainly no coincidence that Polanyi attracted the attention of philosophers of religion (cf. for example Gelwick 1977; Polanyi 1963). His idea seems as simple as it is radical: if the knowledge of reality requires an intimate – unexpressed – union with reality, then the experience of God is also a form of knowledge. However fascinating, it is a thesis that leads to forms of mysticism largely independent of the recognition of the role played by tacit knowledge in scientific research. I agree with Collins (2010: 148) when he wrote, regarding the positivist environment which Polanyi had to fight against: “[in the cultural context in which he lived], it is no surprise that Polanyi was tempted to make tacit knowledge into something mystical and inspirational. I believe that his stress on the personal element of tacit knowledge

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can do damage to the proper understanding of the idea, the profound parts of which have much more to do with the collective embedding of knowledge”. Polanyi also used his discovery of an unexpressed dimension of knowledge in another context: the defence of the autonomy of science. In this case, too, Polanyi’s basic idea is simple and original: if knowledge requires learning by example, through the close relationship between the master and the student, then scientists know more about the research they are carrying out than what can be verbally learned by any citizen, politician or outsider. Consequently, any attempt to direct science from the outside is bound to fail or, worse, will hamper progress. We have already seen how the autonomy of science does not mean the isolation of the scientific community from society, as Polanyi wanted (Sects. 5.5 and 5.6). Here, a problem that arises spontaneously within Polanyi’s own analysis is instead interesting: all scientists have an adequate tacit knowledge, only in the limited field of their expertise. Consequently, the question that is inevitably asked is on what basis the authority of science in general is founded. After all, the same arguments used by Polanyi to defend science from external interference could be used by any small group of specialists with regard to other specialists with different competences and hence a different tacit knowledge. In this way, any school may claim the right to continue to exist, regardless of its merits and of any evaluation proposed by other scientists and researchers. In formulating the solution to this problem Polanyi advances another, equally winning idea: the concept of a Republic of Science. Polanyi’s Republic of Science is based on two principles. The first principle is the spontaneous coordination of independent initiatives: each researcher bases their efforts on the results obtained by other researchers, thus achieving mutual adjustment. Polanyi (1962b: 3) compares this operation to the ‘invisible hand’ of Adam Smith: “Such self-coordination of independent initiatives leads to a joint result which is unpremeditated by any of those who bring it about. Their coordination is guided as by ‘an invisible hand’ towards the joint discovery of a hidden system of things”. To be more exact, it is not just an analogy, since for Polanyi both the market and the research are based on the same principle of spontaneous coordination. It remains to be clarified how spontaneous coordination of independent scientific initiatives can work in research, given the barriers that the different forms of tacit knowledge create in the scientific community. This is where a second principle comes into play: In seeking the answer to this question, we shall discover yet another organisational principle that is essential for the control of a multitude of independent scientific initiatives. This principle is based on the fact that, while scientists can admittedly exercise competent judgment only over a small part of science, they can usually judge an area adjoining their own special studies that is broad enough to include some fields on which other scientists have specialised. We thus have a considerable degree of overlapping between the areas over which a scientist can exercise a sound critical judgment. [. . .] so that the whole of science will be covered by chains and networks of overlapping neighbourhoods. (ibid.: 7).

This excerpt of Polanyi’s is of great interest. The passage suggests that, while not having the right tacit knowledge, specific to a field of research, each scientist is able to make a well-informed evaluation of an area of research adjoining their own.

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Polanyi does not go into an explanation as to what constitutes the form of knowledge that allows a scientist to evaluate the work of colleagues pertaining to different fields, but it is difficult not to see in this kind of competency the knowledge that characterises ‘interactional experts‘. We have seen that interactional experts are those who can competently interact with a researcher, even though they are not able to perform independent research in that field, because they do not have the necessary tacit knowledge. This does not mean, and it is worth repeating it, that tacit knowledge cannot be acquired at a later stage, but from what has been said before, it is obvious that it cannot be acquired easily: the greater the distance between the fields of specialisation, the more effort the undertaking will need. It is therefore thanks to interactional knowledge that the Republic of Science is able to function as a network of mutual relationships, preventing the fields of specialisation from collapsing into a myriad of communities unable to communicate. It should be noted that without interactional knowledge the very principle of spontaneous coordination would lose importance, since it could only be applied to the narrow community of a single group of specialists. All that has been said in this work intends to support both the necessity and the possibility of a Republic of Science extended to society as a whole. It is the idea that I expressed in the Introduction like this: in a democratic society, scientists and laypersons are members of the same community of inquiry, which aim at the truth. The necessity of extending the Republic of Science to the whole of society is due to the fact that pure science, applied science and technology are aspects of the very same research, in which facts and values exist side by side. Polanyi could support the isolation of science from society because he assumed that the only value in scientific research was the discovery of the hidden facts of nature. If we reject this assumption, every citizen who holds other values is eligible to be part of the Republic. Not only. Extending the Republic of Science to the whole of society does not jeopardise the objectivity of the inquiry, in fact we have seen how morality also has the objective of truth (in the pragmatist sense). It is in this sense that scientists and laypersons belong to the same community, the one that Dewey called the community of inquirers. It is a single community, as its members share both the scientific mentality (in the Peircean sense we have already looked at) and the objective of the inquiry. Extending the Republic of Science to the whole of society is also possible, not only necessary. Citizens can evaluate proposals that come from scientific research either directly or indirectly. In a direct way, by acquiring the skills that make them interactional experts; and in an indirect way, by assessing the reliability of scientists and researchers. As we have seen, professional scientists could also benefit from this extension. We saw this in the Vajont case and in the research into AIDS. In the most obvious way, this is also the case with regulatory science, which aims to provide the scientific basis on which to draw up the regulations governing the use and introduction of various products or services, particularly those that have implications for health (we have already encountered an example of this in the fight against AIDS). In her study on GMOs, Sheila Jasanoff (2005: 108 ff.) notes that regulatory science has particular characteristics. While scientific research generally progresses through

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critical discussions, regulatory science tends to rely more on the authority of experts. As Jasanoff always shows, this involves friction with public opinion and also other members of scientific research.13 Despite the difference in language and philosophical references, it is easy to find similarities between the argument sustained here and the idea of a ‘post-normal’ science advanced in various works by Silvio O. Funtowicz and Jerome Ravetz (1992, 1993). As is well known, these authors defend the need for an extended community, in which all the interested parties are entitled to evaluate an inquiry. However, the difference in language (and philosophical references) cannot be reduced to a mere question of style. The pragmatist community of inquiry is indeed an extended community, because it includes both scientists and laypersons, but it is a community of people who have the same objective: the truth. Funtowicz and Ravetz distance themselves from the feeling of gloomy pessimism that appears in the writings of the postmodernists (this is why they introduced the concept of ‘postnormal science’), but in their writings the idea of a community with the objective of truth never emerges. On the contrary, where there are references to truth, these are relegated to science in its most traditional sense, where there are no value implications. In their view, the moral dimension not only introduces greater complexity in scientific research (which is indisputable), but also makes it difficult to extend the search for truth to fields that are not exclusively factual.14 The same reasoning applies to the ‘technical democracy’ proposed by Michel Callon in the wake of Bruno Latour’s work. Callon does not want to deny objectivity to scientific research. As, for example, he writes: “[Latour claims] that science is the continuation of politics by other means. Obviously this is not to say, and he has never said, that science is reducible to just politics, that it is only an avatar of politics disguised under an assumed name. He restricted himself to observing that, when successful, the consequences, and sometimes even the project of the detour through the laboratory, is the reconstruction of the world in which we decide to live” (Callon et al. 2011: 68). However, Callon is not interested in the epistemological problem of why science sometimes succeeds. Nor do we find any references to cognitive merits between different types of knowledge, including the knowledge of those who do not have the credentials of an expert; whether and how they can combine in a fruitful way in an attempt to get closer to the truth. These are epistemological problems, which pragmatism seeks to answer, or at least the pragmatism I am defending here. Latour and his school have waged a relentless controversy over the demands of

13

For regulatory science, see also Jasanoff (1990), where she shows how the limits of peer review systems are particularly apparent in this very case. 14 See Funtowicz and Ravetz (1993: 744): “To characterize an issue involving risk and the environment, in what we call ‘post-normal science’, we can think of it as one where facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent. In such a case, the term ‘problem’, with its connotations of an exercise where a defined methodology is likely to lead to a clear solution, is less appropriate. We would be misled if we retained the image of a process where true scientific facts simply determine the correct policy conclusions”. When moving into fields where there is uncertainty and values, every reference to the truth ceases to exist.

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epistemology. In an interview with François Ewald, Latour (2005) goes so far as to define epistemology ‘boring’. I do not know if it is boring. Certainly, while I do not deny the importance of sociological and anthropological research, epistemology is very much the core focus of this book.

6.5

Why the Truth (with a Capital ‘T’) Is Important

Once, it used to be said that truth is the fundamental value of science. Other human activities, it was said, also strive for the truth: metaphysics is definitely one of them. That statement certainly did not intend to claim that only science had the objective of truth. Rather, the intention was to argue that scientific research would have been inconceivable without the value of truth. Many have also said, and for good reasons, that contrary to metaphysics, science was also the only method that could give us the cheerful hope of coming close to the truth. As we have seen, this is what Peirce believed. Since the nineteen sixties, many things have changed. Today, the role of truth in research has to be carefully defended in the face of a corrosive scepticism about the cognitive claims of science. The supposed scientific truths are dissolved in social constructs, the result of negotiations and socio-economic interests. Although it went against his own intentions, it was most likely Thomas Kuhn who launched this corrosive scepticism. Following in Kuhn’s footsteps, came the strong programme in the sociology of science, in which it was argued that not only the true/false categories but also all epistemic factors should be carefully excluded from explanations regarding the conception, acceptance or rejection of a theory (cf., in particular, Bloor 1983, 1991; Barnes 1982). Of course, this affirmation is based on careful historical reconstructions (e.g. Barnes and Shapin 1979; Shapin and Schaffer 1985), but the ultimate reasons underlying this affirmation are based on an argument of a conceptual nature: the empirical underdetermination of theories by data, according to which any observation that confirms a given theory, also confirms infinitely many other hypotheses that are incompatible with given hypothesis. Since the choice between theories cannot be determined by empirical reasons (including in this thesis, it would seem, the epistemic values) then the choice of alternative theories must be determined (in the sense of being caused) by sociological factors.15 The strong programme has also been heavily criticised by the so-called ‘anthropologists’ of science, but the idea that the supposed knowledge provided by scientific research should still be dissolved into the social sphere has remained deeply rooted in the Science and Technology Studies. 15

In reality, Barnes and Bloor assume without any argument that the introduction of social categories is necessary to explain the theoretical choice between possible alternatives coherent with empirical evidence. Both Slezak (1991) and Laudan (1984a) point out that the presence of social factors must be independently proven. In general, the attempt to derive from the underdetermination the thesis of the irrelevance of epistemic factors is like biting off more than can be chewed. On this, see Laudan (1984a, b). For a detailed analysis, refer to Barrotta (1998).

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The progressive delegitimization of scientific research has reached such a point that some sociologists of science, despite being educated within Science and Technology Studies, have begun to feel that it is necessary to put a stop to it. This is the case of Harry Collins, who, together with Robert Evans, pioneered what they themselves called the ‘Third Wave of Social Studies of Science’ (cf. Collins and Evans 2002, 2017). Following their historical reconstruction, undoubtedly convincing even though inevitably approximate,16 Wave One is characterised by the happy times in which philosophers, together with scientists, were convinced that an epistemic justification could be given to scientific research: science was free from moral and social values, and the theories put forward by the various scientific communities offered a genuine knowledge of nature. Wave Two is the corrosive wave of Science and Technology Studies. As Collins and Evans (2017: 108 and 40) write: “under Wave Two, science is eroded as non-scientific values encourage new kinds of behaviour. [. . .] The view associated with Wave Two is that the truth of the matter cannot be found, that there are only interpretations and perspectives.” What characterises Wave Three is the defence of the set of values, including the truth, which define the peculiar ‘form of life’ that is science: “We desperately need to preserve the moral imperative that guided science under Wave One, and whatever drives it. [. . .] It is the corrosive effect of [Wave Two] that Wave Three tries to overcome” (ibid.: 77 and 40). The objective is acceptable, and shared by the writer. What is very different is the way it is to be achieved. Indeed, what distinguishes Collins and Evans’s attempt is that the objective would be achieved by retaining all that has been sustained by Wave Two, despite its radically sceptical and corrosive consequences: Wave Three involves finding a special rationale for science and technology even while we accept the findings of Wave Two (Collins and Evans 2002: 44). Those who cleave to Wave Two, and cannot see the point of Wave Three [. . .], want to replace natural scientist’s findings with social scientists’ findings. In contrast, those who adhere to both Wave Three and Wave Two want to add social analysis to science, rather than replace one with the other. [. . .] there is nothing in the Third Wave that is incompatible with the description of science provided by the Second Wave – the disagreement is solely about implications (Collins and Evans 2017: 80 and 100).

Collins and Evans’s proposal can be considered a somewhat peculiar variant of the double-truth theory. In their case, we should distinguish truth, i.e. the value that offers a justification for scientific research (to avoid any confusion we will write it with a capital T), from the concept of truth that is normally used by scientists and

16

The supporters of Wave Two have, with good reason, protested that in this way Collins and Evans have lumped together very different authors under the same label (see, for example, Jasanoff 2003). However, we must consider that the way in which Collins and Evans characterise Wave Two serves their theses, which mainly concern Wave Three. I find nothing rhetorically wrong in this strategy. Furthermore, Collins and Evans explicitly admit that in this way they introduced a remarkable historical simplification: “Our historical version of the Second Wave was painted with a broad brush and we acknowledge its deficiencies” (Collins and Evans 2002: 449).

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characterises their specific ‘form of life’ (from here on, truth, in this sense, will be written with a lowercase t). The first concept of Truth is the one generally argued by philosophers and scientists themselves. As we have said, with this concept it is stated that scientific research offers a genuine, albeit fallible and never absolutely certain, knowledge of the world. In this context, Truth is set as the founding objective of science and provides a justification, or ‘foundation’, to the procedures used by science. For Collins and Evans, this Truth has been definitively consigned to the attic by contemporary sociology of science: “We take it that what was found out under Wave Two of science studies makes it very difficult to defend science on the ground of its truth and utility” (Collins and Evans 2017: 19). As we have said, from this point of view the analysis of science offered by Wave Three is identical to the one supported by Wave Two. The second concept of truth is saved by Wave Three. Truth “is the fundamental value of science [. . .]. [. . .] the form of life of science is driven by the desire to find the truth of the matter, along with the belief that truth of the matter can be found” (ibid.: 40). Once this ‘overarching goal’ of science is accepted, it seems that all (or almost all) the other values that characterise the form of life of science follow: “whatever we social scientists say, scientists are sure they can, eventually, find the truth of the matter, if their search is long enough and assiduous enough. As long as scientists believe this, then their methodology demands that they preserve their value system” (ibid.: 150). However, just to repeat, though inherent in the processes that characterise science, these values cannot be justified from an epistemic point of view (this would be incompatible with Wave Two). Rather, they can be defended on moral grounds: “[What characterises our position consists] in the decision to value science on moral grounds rather than epistemic ground” (ibid.: 132). Finally, it should be noted that Collins and Evans do not even intend to provide a moral justification for the values of science. For them, the values of science are rather chosen, comparing them with the alternative options that are so undesirable as to make the choice ‘self-evident’ in favour of the values of science. (ibid.: 19 ff.). Collins and Evans’s thesis lays itself open to many criticisms. We will analyse some of them in ascending order of importance. Sometimes, it is argued that their analysis brings us back to the dichotomy between fact and value.17 As we will see further on, there is something correct in this affirmation. However, it would be a mistake to underestimate the subtleties of the double-truth theory. As I have said, Collins and Evans agree with everything that

17

See, for example, Fisher (2009, Chap. 5). Fisher raises many interesting problems when he examines the position of Collins and Evans. For example, he looks at the crucial problem of the connection between scientific and technological progress and social progress. It is certainly not the job of the scientific expert to decide what kind of technology humankind needs. However, we must consider that Collins and Evans’s position intentionally does not address this kind of issue (Cf. Collins and Evans 2017: 74–6). The accusation of going back to the thesis of Wave One is one that is frequently launched by the critics of Collins and Evans. See also Jasanoff (2003) and Wynne (2003).

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Wave Two supported. In their view, it is indisputable that scientific research is a matter of interpretation and perspective. The only part of Wave Two they reject concerns its corrosive consequences in the scientific form of life. This, I have said, must be defended for reasons of moral considerations. Even though scientists cannot provide any justification, they do well (in a strictly moral sense) to believe that their objective is the Truth: “we know that the majority of working scientists know very little about [science], apart from how to do it. And that, to repeat, is a good thing, because it helps to preserve the values of science” (ibid.: 78). Thanks to the double-truth theory, Collins and Evans can therefore argue that their analysis does not take us back (or, at least, it takes us in a very different way) to the dichotomy between facts and values sustained by Wave One. That said, it remains that double-truth theories have never had much luck in the history of thought. Supporting two conflicting truths, trying to make them compatible simply by specifying their different domain, is in fact difficult to reconcile with the aspiration to the most general philosophical and scientific conceptions. Collins and Evans’s theses put sociologists of science in the awkward position of those who deny the Truth (when reflecting on science) while at the same time affirming the truth (when adopting science as the form of life in their research). This critical observation would obviously not impress Collins and Evans very much: The social scientist with scientific integrity has, then, to learn to live in compartments: a compartment for doing science and another compartment for analysing it. This is not so hard because living in compartments is fundamental to training in social science. The social scientist has to learn to ‘alternate’ between the world of those being studied and the world of the analyst. (ibid.: 77)

Collins and Evans are certainly very dismissive when they confidently affirm the failure of the attempt to give an epistemic justification of the scientific method. Pragmatists have offered a justification of this type: only the scientific mentality can give us the hope to reach true beliefs, in the sense that they will not in principle give rise to the irritation of doubt. Collins and Evans fail to criticise this or other justifications of the scientific method. In part, the reason is that Collins and Evans take for granted that the findings of Wave Two have definitively been established; in part, and here the line taken by their book again becomes subtle, they believe that any philosophical justification is useless and redundant. Consider this excerpt: dear reader, do not abandon this book just because you are convinced that science can be justified in a ‘rational way’. You do not have to believe what is written next to persevere with the book (ibid.: 21)

Collins and Evans’s reasoning is clearly the following: a philosophical justification of Truth as the objective of scientific research, and of the values resulting from it, is untenable, as well as being, in their opinion, useless because Wave Three retains all (or almost all) those values (although understood to mean what characterises science as a ‘form of life’). So, Collins and Evans continue, let us avoid unnecessary discussions and concentrate on the consequences that result from the common intention of saving the values of science from the corrosive scepticism that has become dominant over the last decades.

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It is on this point that I find their analysis particularly inadequate. Rarely can studies on philosophical foundations be reduced to an aesthetic embellishment, without it having any important conceptual consequences. Indeed, the pragmatist conception of Truth has significant consequences, which are incompatible with the theses of Collins and Evans. Collins and Evans pose a rigid dichotomy between the political and social sphere, on the one hand, and the scientific and technical sphere, on the other. This is their revision, within Wave Three, of the dichotomy between facts and values: In a rather old-fashioned way, reminiscent of Wave One, Wave Three separates the scientific and technical input to decision-making from the political input (Collins and Evans 2002: 53). Much of the controversy about the Third Wave paper turns on this difference, with the critics claiming that it is impossible to distinguish between the technical and political without reinventing the Wave One fact-value distinction that Wave Two had so comprehensively destroyed (Collins and Evans 2017: 17).

So, although with good reason Collins and Evans deny that their position is equal to returning to the fact-value dichotomy sustained by Wave One, at the same time they try to defend the dichotomy between the scientific sphere and the political and social sphere. This dichotomy is incompatible with the pragmatist conception of Truth. Pragmatism is a form of cognitivism, for which even judgements concerning social and moral values have a truth-value. As I have repeatedly said, scientists and laypersons are members of a single community of inquiry whose objective is the pursuit of Truth. This does not mean we should deny that in society and politics there are special interests that are defended through ‘horse-trading’ and ‘pork-barrelling’ practices. However, perfectionist democracy adopted by pragmatism would argue that there are special legitimate interests and special illegitimate interests, and that this distinction belongs to social research that, again, has the objective of Truth. This also has consequences at an institutional level. Following perfectionist democracy supported by pragmatism, the expert committee proposed by Collins and Evans loses much of its value, although we need not strip it of all its usefulness. Certainly, their task could not be described in the way Collins and Evans choose to do it: “[The committee should not ask themselves] ‘What is the scientific and technological truth of the matter? [Instead they should ask] ‘What do scientists and technologists currently believe and how firmly do they believe it? After this question had been clearly and publicly answered, the rest is politics” (Collins and Evans 2017: 149). As I have already pointed out, in this way Collins and Evans reaffirm a dichotomy between a scientific phase (whose task is the knowledge of facts) and a political phase (which consists in using the facts determined by science in order to accomplish social values), and this dichotomy is incompatible with pragmatism. Albeit from an undoubtedly very different perspective, I agree with the following criticism levelled at Collins and Evans by Sheila Jasanoff (2003: 394): “To label some aspects of society’s responses to uncertainty ‘political’ and some others ‘scientific’ makes little sense when the very contours of what is certain or

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uncertain in policy domains get established thorough intense and intimate sciencesociety negotiations”. Once again, the distinction between political and social aspects – on the one hand – and scientific aspects – on the other – is a distinction within the same logic of inquiry. Transforming them into ‘existential antecedents’ of radically different activities means falling into one of the many variants of the ‘philosophical fallacy‘, to use Dewey’s terminology. For perfectionist democracy, the solution to the problem of the growing scepticism towards scientific research is different from what is sustained by Collins and Evans. For pragmatism, it lies in spreading the correct scientific mentality so that different groups of citizens can set themselves up as a body of public opinion, interacting with scientists on issues that involve them from the point of view of their values and interests. For Dewey, we must remember, there is no one single public opinion but several publics that emerge and disappear according to different social and scientific circumstances. On the other hand, scientists should recognise that scientific research consists in resolving problems; and that in this activity they can and must benefit from the knowledge of laypersons. As Dewey observed (1927: 364): “the man who wears the shoe knows best that it pinches and where it pinches, even if the expert shoemaker is the best judge of how the trouble is to be remedied”. The idea of perfectionist democracy proposed here is obviously far from technocracy, from which Collins and Evans also clearly distance themselves. Technocracy believes in an elite capable of resolving both scientific and social problems. On the contrary, the community of inquirers of pragmatism potentially involves all citizens. In the spirit of Dewey, it is intrinsically democratic.

6.6

The Open Society and Its Philosophy

In discussing the relationship between science and democracy, it is inevitable to encroach upon issues of political philosophy. This is why we sometimes talk of a political turn in the philosophy of science. The idea that democracy is a community of inquirers has many similarities with Popper’s Open Society. This also urges us to wonder what relationship it has with the Free Society proposed by Popper’s most iconoclastic student, Paul Feyerabend. Therefore, it is worth examining their similarities, and also their equally evident differences. Popper wrote The Open Society and its Enemies during the Second World War, as his personal contribution to the struggle against totalitarianism. It is a period now far behind us, whose cultural problems and contours are no longer immediately perceptible. It should therefore not be surprising that Popper’s book now lends itself to antithetical interpretations. Malachi H. Hacohen (2000) includes it in the socialistdemocratic tradition. For Hacohen, the openly conservative statements of the mature Popper are only the result of psychological changes, certainly not the fruit of a

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meditated political philosophy.18 In contrast, Jeremy Shearmur (1996) places Popper in the prime of the tradition of classical liberalism, together with Popper’s great friend, Friedrich von Hayek, to whom Popper dedicated the book Conjectures and Refutations. The hermeneutic opening of a book is a sign of intellectual wealth. However, it does not mean that we can get Popper to say everything that pleases us. Today, references to the Open Society risk using a catchy slogan to suggest philosophical views far removed from those upheld by Popper. Such a case is represented by Steve Fuller’s book (2000) on the democratic governance of contemporary science. We should acknowledge that Fuller does not intend to historically reconstruct Popper’s thinking. Rather, he uses the idea of Open Society to put forward his own vision of scientific process in light of the demands of democracy. Nevertheless, Fuller’s references to Popper could be misleading; and it is interesting to understand the reasons, since, through the very free use that Fuller makes of the idea of Open Society, we will be able to appreciate the considerable differences between the pragmatist view of the relationship between science and democracy and the one that can be found in Popper’s works. Fuller makes an interesting and, in many ways, penetrating sociological criticism of Big Science. However, Fuller’s sociological analyses are not directly relevant here. From my point of view, instead, two of his philosophical claims are interesting, which are central to the overall debate on the relationship between science and democracy, including the sociological one. The first affirmation concerns the connection between the moral and the epistemic in scientific research. Fuller (ibid.: 43) complains that the lack of a satisfactory reflection on Big Science is due to the “subdivision between ethics and epistemology within professional philosophy in the Anglo-American world, which fosters the illusion that a clear distinction can be drawn between the morality and epistemically relevant consequences of a given course of action”. This is the illusion that leads to a misunderstanding of the exact social dimension of scientific research. It could be said that Popper does not deny the existence of a social dimension of science. For example, in a speech given in Vienna, and published in its final version many years later in The Myth of the Framework, Popper (1994) admits that contemporary scientific research involves a certain amount of moral responsibility on the part of the scientist. However, this responsibility is not due to the logic of the inquiry. In other words, it does not have characteristics inherent in the method of science. Rather, it is due to the gradual abandonment of pure research in favour of applied research. This is not a situation that meets with his approval. In fact, it is evident that Popper looks nostalgically at the time when the sole responsibility of the scientist

As Hachoen writes (2000: 486): “When the cold-war coalition and the welfare state faced difficulties, Popper remained quiet. [. . .] Hayek managed to corrupt his socialism”. 18

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was towards the truth.19 On closer inspection, Popper’s whole argument presupposes specifically the philosophical dichotomy between the moral and the epistemic, which is in contrast strongly rejected by Fuller. Even a superficial look at Popper’s writings gives credit to an even more radical thesis. Not only is there no evidence in Popper’s writings of a conscious and articulate criticism of the dichotomy between the moral and the epistemic, but the dichotomy is the fundamental assumption of Popper’s entire political philosophy. This is evident from Popper’s use of the dualism between factual assertions, on the one hand, and proposals (political or moral) on the other. As he states in an addendum to the Open Society, dualism is justified by the following considerations: “[while] standards always pertain to facts, [. . .] facts are evaluated by standards. [. . .]. Whenever we are faced with a fact – and more especially, with a fact which we may be able to change – we can ask whether or not it complies with certain standards” (Popper 1966, vol. 2: 384). Obviously, it is not possible here to mention Popper’s (certainly well-founded) criticism of historicism. What matters is how such criticisms are triggered by the dualism between facts and values: the act of determining a fact must always be distinguished from the act of evaluating it. It is precisely the rejection of the dichotomy between fact and value, one of the distinctive features of pragmatism, which I have at length tried to defend and explain in these pages. The dichotomy or dualism between facts and values thus marks a clear watershed between the Open Society of Popper and the community of inquirers of pragmatism. There is, we have said, a second affirmation of particular interest in Fuller’s reworking of the Open Society concept, and this one is also clearly incompatible with the spirit and letter of Popper’s philosophy. This affirmation is closely linked to the previous one. Following the approach of most contemporary sociologies of science, Fuller invites us to abandon the concepts of the ‘truth’ and ‘objectivity’ of science. As he writes: “‘Truth’, ‘rationality’ and ‘objectivity’ are metaphysical hypotheses that recent sociologists of science do not require to understand how society works” (Fuller 2000: 99). Contrary to Fuller’s suggestion, Popper (1956) has instead spent many pages defending the irreplaceable role of truth in scientific research, which he intended as a correspondence between propositions and facts. Moreover, and for me this is the central point, Popper himself (1966, vol. 2: 385) notes how this conception of truth naturally leads to the conclusion that science and morality are profoundly different activities as they refer to two distinct regulative ideals:

Popper (1994: 121): “One may say that the problem [concerning the moral responsibility of the scientist] has lately become more general, due to the fact that lately all science, and indeed all learning, has tended to become potentially applicable. Formerly, the pure scientist or the pure scholar had only one responsibility beyond those which everyone else has – that is, the search for truth. [. . .] For all I know, Maxwell had little reason to worry about the possible applications of his equations. And perhaps even Hertz did not worry about Hertzian waves. This happy situation belongs to the past”. 19

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In the realm of facts, it is the idea of correspondence between a statement or a proposition and a fact; that is to say, the idea of truth. In the realm of standards, or of proposals, the regulative idea may be described in many ways, and called by many terms, for example, by the term ‘right’ or ‘good’. [. . .] no appeal to authority, not even religious authority, can get us out of the difficulty that the regulative idea of absolute ‘rightness’ or ‘goodness’ differs in its logical status from that of absolute truth; and we have to admit the difference.

This point also marks a clear difference with pragmatism. For pragmatism science and morality are two aspects of the same identical inquiry which has one objective: the truth, understood in a different sense from that of a correspondence between propositions and facts. The two questions Fuller raises show the profound conceptual divide between the Open Society of Popper and the community of inquirers of pragmatism. For Popper scientific research and democratic research towards a better world do not constitute a distinction within the very same logic of inquiry, as pragmatism claims, but a simple analogy, which he considered to be politically fruitful. In short, Popper believed that science was a model that society should try to imitate. The same concept of ‘negative utilitarianism’ clearly reveals how the rationality of social research for Popper represents a more or less adequate imitation of the rationality of scientific research. Between the pursuit of happiness and the elimination of suffering there is an asymmetry similar to the one that exists between verifying and falsifying a scientific theory. We cannot verify a universal statement, but we can eliminate it as a claimant to truth by falsifying it. Likewise, politics should not aim to achieve happiness in this world, which easily leads to totalitarianism, but to eliminate suffering.20 In both cases, science and society should proceed through an eliminative process. Clearly, it is just an analogy, however attractive it may be. To some, such differences will appear too abstract. After all, what matters is the general vision of science and democracy. Both in Popper and in pragmatism, rationality is a social and critical activity. In both cases, dogmatic attitudes are discouraged, exemplified by the ‘tenacious’ defence of one’s own theories, which is incompatible with the opening up of the scientific mentality. These are fair observations, but they hide the conceptual limits that Popper’s philosophy shows when having to address the relationship between science and democracy. Since there is only an analogy between scientific processes and democratic processes, in Popper’s philosophy there is no place for the problems which we took as our starting

This affirmation is found almost everywhere in The Open Society. For example, he writes: “I suggest [. . .] to replace the utilitarian maxim ‘Aim at the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number’, or briefly, ‘Maximize happiness’, by the formula ‘The least amount of avoidable suffering for all’, or briefly, ‘Minimize suffering’. [. . .] We should realize that from the moral point of view suffering and happiness must not be treated as symmetrical; that is to say, the promotion of happiness is in any case much less urgent than the rendering of help to those who suffer, and the attempt to prevent suffering” Popper (1966, vol. 1: 235). Among commentators, Bryan Magee (1973) particularly highlighted the analogy between the asymmetry on which the principle of falsification is based and the one on which negative utilitarianism is based. 20

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point to understand the role of public opinion in scientific research. Within Popper’s philosophy it does not make much sense to talk about a fragmentation of science and society and their mutual relationships. Nor does it make sense to speak of a science inevitably laden with moral values. For Popper, the relationship between science and society is one of harmony, never conflicting. It is no coincidence that Popper never consciously raises the question of the relationship between experts and public opinion, a theme which is central here. From this point of view, Feyerabend’s Free Society is far more interesting, as there is a broad reflection on the role of experts in democratic societies. It is a strongly critical reflection. In Feyerabend’s writings there is in fact an explicit invitation to revolt against the authoritarianism of contemporary science. The reference to contemporary science should be stressed, because Feyerabend believed that science once possessed a liberating and anti-authoritarian function. Only at a later stage, thanks to the help given by the state, would science have resulted in a sclerotic and dogmatic knowledge. The solution Feyerabend proposes is well known: against dogmatism, it is essential to have an incommensurable proliferation of theories and points of view so as to reveal the prejudices and assumptions implicit in each of them. Within science, this can be done not only by proposing innovative and unorthodox theories as Galileo did in his day, 21 but also by reserving the old theories, which the scientific community has now rejected: “the principle of proliferation not only recommends invention of new alternatives, it also prevents the elimination of older theories which have been refuted” (Feyerabend 1975: 48 fn). This is the famous principle of anything goes that Feyerabend defended with conviction. The process of proliferation, however, must not stop at science alone, since it has to involve society as a whole. The scientists’ point of view must be attacked by perspectives expressly alternative to the scientific one22 and also from the point of view of laypersons, who are called upon to make their contribution in revealing the presumptions hidden within the expert’s opinion. In this respect, Feyerabend believes that the apparent inaccessibility of the language of experts is a rhetorical construction to protect science from critics. Laypersons should not allow themselves to be intimidated: “science – writes Feyerabend – is not beyond the reach of the natural shrewdness of the human race. I suggest that this shrewdness be applied to all important social matters which are

21

Feyerabend devotes many pages of Against Method to Galileo, see Feyerabend (1975). See Feyerabend (1975: 49–50): “Voodoo [. . .] is a case in point. Nobody knows it, everybody uses it as a paradigm of backwardness and confusion. And yet Voodoo has a firm though still not sufficiently understood material basis, and a study of its manifestations can be used to enrich, and perhaps even to revise, our knowledge of physiology”. In Feyerabend (1978: 91–6), Feyerabend does not hesitate to defend astrology as well. 22

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now in the hands of experts” (Feyerabend 1978: 98).23 In a nutshell, this is the idea of the democratisation of science that Feyerabend proposed. Part of Feyerabend’s position is plausible. Even conceding that the expert’s specialised language offers some advantages, starting with a precision that is designed to avoid ambiguity, it is at the same time certainly possible for experts to become so accustomed to their own particular perspective that they become blind with respect to their initial assumptions. In this sense, criticism from alternative viewpoints is always welcome, including those of laypersons on issues that, for whatever reason, affect them directly. However, from this the principle of proliferation does not ensue. For the principle, progress is equivalent to the mere coexistence of as large as possible different points of view, so as to prevent them from turning into hidden presumptions. Scientific and moral progress implies a moment of dissent followed by a new consensus, at least in the sense of an acceptance of criticisms of prejudices established uncritically. The principle of proliferation stresses the first moment, but intentionally neglects the second. In other words, if the laypersons’ point of view is important for progress, this must be highlighted by changing the expert’s point of view, not by the continuing existence of incommensurable viewpoints (and, of course, it must not be excluded that through critical discussion it is not the expert’s point of view that changes, but that of the citizen, or that both points of view undergo change).24 Pragmatism accepts the plausible part of Feyerabend’s stance: it is certainly conceivable that specialist knowledge of experts conceals prejudices. However, unlike Feyerabend, Pragmatism believes that a cognitive progress is possible both in science and in morality. It is with a view of this objective that pragmatism hopes for the extension of the scientific mentality to society as a whole, which obviously includes not only the laypersons but also the members of the scientific community that are incapable of transcending their particular expert perspective.

References Barnes, B. (1982). T.S. Kuhn and social science. New York: Columbia University Press. Barnes, B., & Shapin, S. (Eds.). (1979). Natural order. Historical studies of scientific culture. Beverly Hills/London: Sage. Barrotta, P. (1998). La dialettica scientifica. Per un nuovo razionalismo critico. Turin: UTETlibreria.

23

This is clearly an exaggeration by Feyerabend. On this, see Selinger (2011, Chap. 5). The issue raised is linked to a tension within the same philosophy of science as Feyerabend’s. Two theories are mutually incommensurable when they do not share any observational statements. If this is the case, the two theories cannot even be defined as rival, and therefore it is not comprehensible how their existence allows mutual criticism. On the other hand, if two theories are rival then criticism is definitely possible, but this requires that they are commensurable. This problem has been raised continually by Feyerabend’s critics. More recently it was also raised by John Preston (1997: 111). 24

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Erratum to: Index

Erratum to: Index in: P. Barrotta, Scientists, Democracy and Society, Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning 16 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74938-9 The original version of the index was inadvertently published without the below listed author names: A Achistein Adams B Barnes Barrotta Bethe, H Betz, G. Bodmer, W. Bovens, L. Bush, G.W. C Carloni, G.C. Cartwright, N. Charney, J.G. Cheney, D. Churchman, C.W. Coady, D. Collins, H.

The updated online version for this book can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74938-9 © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 P. Barrotta, Scientists, Democracy and Society, Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning 16, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74938-9_7

E1

E2 Commager Conway, E.M. Corry, R. D Darwin, C. Descates, R. Dewey, J. Dorato, M. Douglas, H. Douglas, M. E Earman, J. Einstein, A. Elliott, K. Evans, R. F Feyerabend, P. G Gattei, S. Gervasoni, A. H Hansen, J. Hardie, J. Hartmann, S. Hempel, C.G. Howson, C. J James, W. Jeffrey, R. John, S. K Kitcher, P. Knorr-Cetina, K. Kordig, C.R. Kuhn, T. L Lacey, H. Latour, B. Lavoisier, A. Levi, I. Lomborg, B. Lovelock, J.

Erratum to: Index

Erratum to: Index M McMullin, E. Merlin, T. Mitchell, S. Molina, M. Montuschi, E. Müller, L. O Oppenheimer, R. Oreskes, N. P Palmieri, N.W. Parker, W.S. Peirce, C.S. Phillips. L.D. Press, S.J. Preston, J. Priestley, J. Putnam, H. R Rhodes, R. Rowland, F.S. Rudner, R. S Schwarz, M. Semenza, C. Semenza, E. Shapin, S. Shrader-Frechette, K.S. Solomon, S. Steele, K. T Tanur, J.M. Teller, E. Thompson, M. U Urbach, P. W Wildawsky, A. Winsberg, E. Wynne, B.

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Conclusion: More on the Four Conceptions Pertaining to the Relationship Between Science and Democracy

The book started with the presentation of four different conceptions of the relationship between science and society, which characterise, in order, the Moderate Enthusiasts, the Radical Enthusiasts, the Radical Apocalyptic Party and the Moderate Apocalyptic Party. The terminology should not be taken too seriously. As I have said, they are somewhat ironic terms used to emphasise my doubts as to their ability to grasp the connections that link science with society. As you continue reading, you may have had the impression that I have forgotten about them, but the attentive reader will have quickly identified them in many of the issues dealt with in the book. For example, the rejection of the dichotomy between pure science and applied science directly relates to the position of the Moderate Enthusiasts. The pragmatic maxim illustrates the difficulty of reducing science to linguistic strings, independent of any activity, and this also invalidates the position of the Radical Enthusiasts. In their turn, the Radical Apocalyptic Party do not grasp that conceptual frameworks are indeed fundamental to scientific research, but they are needed to select different aspects of a same reality. Finally, the Moderate Apocalyptic Party are certainly not wrong in emphasising the importance of deliberating on deontological codes, but they do not seem to understand that the direct acceptance of responsibility on the part of scientists is closely linked to the autonomy of science: we cannot relieve scientists of their responsibility without thereby depriving them of their indispensable autonomy. If I did not take the trouble to specify to whom I was referring when I dealt with these arguments, it was because I was more interested in showing the weakness of the three presumptions shared by all four conceptions. In these concluding words, I will try to explain them in a reverse sense with respect to what I did in the Introduction, beginning with the overall thesis of the book. The four conceptions are fought on an imaginary boundary that separates science from society. Many scientists and philosophers of science preside over the frontiers defending science from the unwarranted intrusion of society: the latter, in their opinion, certainly has the right to use the achievements of science (this is why, as we have seen, it is emphasised that society should fund basic research), but should © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 P. Barrotta, Scientists, Democracy and Society, Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning 16, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74938-9

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not interfere with the results of research. Their enemies are the post-modernists, the constructivists, and also many movements from society who want to breach the border, denouncing the authoritarian nature of science and the need to make it democratic. Like a karst river, this is a battle that is constantly emerging in debates about the role of science in society. It is also a fruitless battle, because no boundary actually exists. Again, the distinctions are important. It would be foolish to deny the peculiarities of science. However, the distinctions should never be forced into dualisms. The idea of a community of inquirers condemns this very dualism: scientists and laypeople share the same objective, the truth, and share the same mentality, the scientific mentality. It is an idea that is both descriptive and normative. Democratic societies (liberal democratic societies, to be precise) describe this ideal with fairly good accuracy. In fact, we have seen how science and democracy share the same assumptions: one is the flip side of the other’s coin. However, it is also a normative idea because society – and sometimes the scientists themselves – does not in any way meet the standards required by the community of inquirers. Here, there is no need for me to argue again in favour of this conclusion. Instead, I would like to point out that if we accept the conclusion, then we should, for the sake of coherence, reject the three presumptions shared by the four conceptions. These are very influential assumptions, precisely because they are implicitly accepted, also by those who do not seem to want to stop quarrelling, and bitterly too. The three shared presumptions are as follows: (a) if science were not morally neutral then it would not be objective; b) influences between science and society are unidirectional: they go from science to society or from society to science; (c) science and society are two conceptually separate blocs. I have set three theses against these presumptions. Science is objective and at the same time laden with moral values. The discovery that facts and values are closely intertwined and that the epistemic and the moral are inseparable does not affect the objectivity of scientific research. There is nothing in this statement that should trouble scientists and philosophers of science. Sometimes, this is certainly true, values (political, ideological, religious, or others) skew the proper gathering of facts, but we should resist the temptation to adopt a somewhat crass axiology of science, in which all values (except epistemic values) jeopardise the autonomy and progress of science. As I hope to have shown, it is profoundly wrong to equate the objectivity of science with value-free science. Symmetrically, denouncing science as an ideology because it is laden with values risks becoming nonsense. In the first place, even moral values have to be reconstructed as hypotheses that in principle are subject to empirical control. Secondly, science has the characteristic of being self-correcting. This is possible thanks to the continuous verification of its (to use Peirce’s expression) ‘fundamental hypothesis’: the existence of a reality independent of the opinions of individuals. The continual emergence of the irritation of doubt and the often great difficulty in resolving it support the belief that science is objective because thanks to it we are again able to reach expectations that allow us to act without being indecisive. The opposition between those who accept the presumption and those who reject it may be usefully summed up in a slightly different way. For empiricists and the more

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traditional conceptions of science, values distort facts; for constructivists, values constitute facts; for the conception sustained here, values necessarily accompany the gathering of facts. The first two positions, while seeming to be far apart, share the presumption; while only the third reject it. Science and society mutually affect each other in a significant way. It is incorrect to state that science acquires new knowledge and that society uses it for its own ends (with at most adding that society must also fund the research). This is a way to delineate a non-existent boundary anew. Society does not confine itself to using scientific knowledge as it often contributes to establishing the very ontology of science, as we have seen in the analysis of ‘thick concepts’, and more in general in the transactional conception of knowledge and reality. Notwithstanding the antirealism of the sceptics, these ontologies are objective and real. In fact, they are the result of research – stimulated by considerations that are both moral and epistemic – that has solved problems that paralyse our action. We have no guarantees that we are getting closer to the truth, understood as beliefs that in principle do not give rise to doubt. However, by carefully gathering the facts and listening to the criticisms levelled against us we can have the ‘cheerful hope’ to get closer to the truth. This is the essence of the scientific mentality, which concerns both morality and the study of nature. The problems related to inductive risk and the false dichotomy between ‘pure’ science and ‘applied’ science are further confirmations of this thesis. Science and society are fragmented and subject to variable mutual alliances. This discovery has fascinated sociologists of science and, at the same time, has embarrassed philosophers and scientists concerned with demonstrating the neutrality of science with respect to values coming from society. To my mind, instead, it is a sociological fact that is not particularly problematic from a philosophical point of view. Given the inevitable entanglement between the epistemic and the moral, it would be rather surprising if science and society were to appear as two distinct blocs. If, on the other hand, they are components of a single community of inquiry, what we should expect is precisely mutual influences and entanglement. Let us return to the idea of democratic society that pragmatism proposes. Pragmatism has sometimes been accused of excessive concreteness, of looking only at the means to resolve ‘practical’ problems, of forgoing trying to elevate the human spirit through vigorous criticism of values. Commager (1950: 101) uses suave irony to reject this caricature of pragmatism: “popularization – he notes – [is], after all, a sign of vitality.” However, we can and we must say something more incisive. The rejection of the dichotomy between science and morality, supported by pragmatism, brings with it the rejection of the idea that science is indifferent to moral values. This is an essential point because the caricature given to pragmatism goes hand in hand with the poor understanding of the role of the scientific mentality. In the history of thought, indifference to values is in fact the accusation that many philosophers and part of our common sense make against scientific inquiry. Moreover, to make the situation even more serious, there are those scientists and philosophers of science who agree with this conception in order to defend science from the intrusion of moral and social values and, so they believe, the freedom of research. They both make the

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same mistake. Hypostatising the separation between science and values, they think that moral neutrality is a quality inherent in scientific research, while it is rather a division resulting from the existing culture. When dealing with problems that are very similar in certain respects, Dewey observes how the future of democracy is linked to the denunciation of this culture. As he writes: “The answer given to this challenge is bound up with the fate of democracy. [. . .]. While it would be absurd to believe it desirable or possible for every one to become a scientist when science is defined from the side of subject matter, the future of democracy is allied with spread of the scientific attitude” (Dewey 1939: 168). I cannot think of anything better to say as a conclusion to this book.

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Index

A Achistein, P., 63 Adams, J., 71, 72 Agapow, P.M., 41 Agazzi, E., 22, 23 Autonomy of science and social values, 138, 141 Ayer, A., 29, 32

B Balance of nature, 15–17 Barnes, B., 72, 168 Barone, F., 93 Barrotta, P., xxiii, 5, 15, 16, 26, 37, 39, 44, 45, 60, 72, 74, 168 Belief, vii, 2, 15, 25, 28, 34, 35, 37, 52, 54, 61, 63, 69, 83–88, 97–102, 115, 127, 145–147, 150, 161, 170, 171, 182, 183 Bentley, A.F., 118 Bethe, H., 51 Betz, G., 50, 53–56, 63, 65 Biodiversity, 18, 27, 36, 37, 40, 41, 64, 120, 125 Birnbacher, D., 16 Blackburn, S., 31 Black, M., 5 Bloor, D., 168 Bodmer, W., 69 Bovens, L., 65 Boyer, H., 120 Bridge principle, 11–14, 17 Bridgman, P.W., 127–129, 131–133 Bush, G.W., 60 Bush, V., 134–136

C Callon, M., 167 Capabilities, 14, 38, 39, 60 Carcaterra, G., 5, 9 Carloni, G.C., 77, 78 Carson, R., xvii, 4, 5, 13, 15–17, 157 Cartwright, N., 62 Charney, J.G., 58 Cheney, D., 60 Churchman, C.W., xxiv, 49, 50–53, 62, 65 Climate sensitivity, 36, 37, 40, 58–61, 63, 64, 75 Coady, D., 57 Cohen, S.N., 120, 122 Collins, H., 77, 160, 161, 164, 169–173 Commager, H.S., xiii, 158, 183 Common, M., 124 Conceptual frameworks, 59, 63, 70, 72–76, 79, 80, 181 Consensus in science, 67 Constructivism, 69, 72, 73 Convergence of opinions, in science and morality, 68, 100, 115 Conway, E.M., 56, 155 Cooper, G.J., 17 Corry, R., 57 Crocker, T.P., 36

D Dal Piaz, G., 77 Darwin, C., 15, 67, 117 De Grazia, A., 153

© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 P. Barrotta, Scientists, Democracy and Society, Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning 16, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74938-9

195

196 Democracy perfectionist democracy, 172, 173 proceduralist democracy, 148 Descates, R., 54 Desired/desirable, 5, 23, 69, 109, 111, 112, 114, 137, 148, 149, 170, 184 Dewey, J., xiii, xviii–xxii, 2, 7, 10, 13, 22–27, 30, 31, 36, 44, 45, 69, 74, 75, 88–93, 95–100, 105, 108–119, 121, 122, 127, 130, 135, 148, 149, 156, 158, 159, 161, 173, 184 Diamond, P.A., 125 Discovery/creation, 73, 78, 79, 85, 92, 95, 96, 120–122, 131, 133, 136, 139, 152, 159, 161, 164–166, 182, 183 Donatelli, P., 148 Dorato, M., 50 Doubt Cartesian doubt, 54, 87, 156 fictitious doubt, 87 ‘irritation’ of doubt, 83, 85, 88, 98, 99, 102, 104, 140, 145, 146, 161, 171, 182 Douglas, H., 50, 51, 104, 141 Douglas, M., 70–72

E Earman, J., 65, 67 Egerton, F.N., 14, 15 Einstein, A., 67, 101, 133, 153 Ellenberger, L., 153 Elliott, K., 50 Ends ends and values, 111, 112 ends as termination, 110–112 ends-in view, 110–113, 115, 127 Ends as termination, 110, 112 Entanglement, see Fact/value dualism Enthymematic stratagem, 9–13 Environmental economics cognitive, 123–127 existence values, 124–127 moral, 123 transformative values, 126, 127 use values, 125, 127 Epstein, S., 162, 163 Evans, R., 77, 160, 161, 169–173 Evidence and total evidence, 62 Ewald, F., 168 Experts contributory experts, 158–161, 164 direct and indirect methods for evaluation experts, 154, 156, 157

Index experts and public opinion, vii, 150, 151, 157–164, 177 interactional experts, 158, 160–162, 166 reliability of experts, 156 scientific, vii, 69, 156–158, 160–162, 164–169, 174, 176

F Fact-value dichotomy, vii, 2 dichotomy and the dichotomy between technical/scientific phase and political/ social, 68, 172, 175 dichotomy and Popper’s Open Society, 173–176 Feyerabend, P., 72, 173, 177, 178 Fisher, F., 170 Foot, P, 28, 29, 31–35, 37 Forge, J., 96, 130, 131 Frankena, W.K., 6 Fukuyama, F., 147 Fuller, S., 174–176 Funtowicz, S.O., 167

G Galileo, G., xiii, xvi, 92, 95, 177 Galison, P., 128 Gallo, R., 162 Gattei, S., 75 Gaulin, S.J.C., 4 Gauss, J.C.F., 103 Gelwick, R., 164 Gervasoni, A., 76, 77 Gibbard, A., 33–35 Gimpel, J., 94 Glaser, D.A., 94, 95 Gödel, K., 3 Goldman, A.J., 154, 156–158 Gouinlock, J., 112, 114 Graham, L.R., 138 Griffith, P.E., 4 Guston, D.H., 136, 137

H Hacking, I., xvi, 119, 121 Hacohen, M.H., 173 Hansen, J., 60–64 Hansson, B., 109 Hardie, J., 62 Hare, R.M., 28 Hartmann, S., 65 Hausman, J.A., 125

Index Hawkins, T.B., 15 Hayek, F., 174 Hempel, C.G., 50, 52 Hevly, B.W., 128 Hickman, L., 36, 89 Hildebrand, D.L., xxii, 114, 117 Hookway, C., 92, 102, 105 Howson, C., 65 Hume, D., xxiii, 1–14, 16–18, 28, 32, 108, 113, 114 Hume’s fork, 28 Hurlbut, W., 121

I Incommensurability, 72, 73, 75 Is-ought problem derivation of evaluative statements from purely factual premises, 3, 113 fact/value dualism, 2 Great Division, 3

J James, W., xxii, 24, 25, 61, 63 Jansen, S.C., 151 Jasanoff, S., 166, 167, 169, 170, 172 Jeffrey, R., 50, 53, 55 John, S., 50, 56 Joliot-Curie, F., 98, 130, 131, 137 Juergens, R.E., 152

K Kant I., 10 Keller, E.F., 96 Kerner, J., 9 Kirchin, S., 31 Kitcher, P., 12, 66, 135, 140, 141 Knorr-Cetina, K., 72 Koertge, N., xiv, 149 Kordig, C.R., 75 Kricher, J., 17 Kuhn, T., 42, 43, 45, 68, 72, 75, 101, 168

L Lacey, H., 44, 50, 52 LaFollette, H., 21 Lamarck, J.B., 138 Lamb, C., 110 Latour, B., 72, 167 Laudan, L., 44, 168 Laugier, S., 148

197 Lavoisier, A., 74, 119, 133 Levi, I., 50, 52 Light, A., 123 Lippmann, W., 151 List, P.C., 5, 15, 16 Lomborg, B., 57 Lovejoy, A.O., xxii Lovelock, J., 37, 59–61, 63, 64 Lysenko, T., xiii, 2, 4, 137–139 M Maclaurin, J., 40 Magee, B., 176 Margulis, L., 37 Massey, G., 9, 10 Mayr, E., 40 McBurney, D.H., 4 McDowell, J., 31, 32, 34–36 McIntosh, R.P., 14 McMullin, E., 50, 52 Meaning connotation, 25, 26, 42 denotation, 26, 36 of ideas, 25, 26 of objects, 24–26 (see also Pragmatic maxim) Means/ends, 108 Merchant, C., 44 Merlin, T., 76, 78 Method method of authority, 84, 86, 145, 146 method of science, 85–87, 100, 145, 174 method of tenacity, 84, 86, 87, 145, 146, 150 a priori method, 84, 86, 87, 145, 146 Minelli, A., 41 Misak, C., 99, 100, 102, 103, 105, 116 Mitchell, S., 50, 52 Molina, M., 58 Mongin, P., 39 Montagnini, L., 128, 129 Montuschi, E., 62 Moore, G.E., 5, 6 Mounce, H.O., 93 Müller, L., 78, 79 Murdoch, I., 28, 29, 31 Murphey, G.M., 86 N Naturalistic fallacy, 3–6, 9–14, 16 Negrotti, M., 22 Newton, I., 92, 101, 152 Norton, B., 113, 124, 126

198 O Oakeshott, M., 162 Objectivity different meanings of objectivity, 104 moral values and objectivity, 45, 107, 108, 140, 172, 182 Oppenheimer, R., xvi, 51, 128 Oreskes, N., 56, 155

P Palmieri, N.W., 77 Papini, G., xxii Pareto, V., 38 Parker, W.S., 65 Peirce, C.S., vii, xx, xxii, xxiv, 23–25, 44, 55, 83–88, 98–105, 115, 119, 130, 139, 145–147, 149, 168, 182 Pera, M., 42, 44 Phillips, L.D., 67 Philosophical fallacy, 31, 97, 173 Pimm, S.L., 17 Poincaré, H., 1, 2, 4–8, 10, 12 Polanyi, M., 2, 94, 133–137, 139, 140, 160, 164–166 Popper, K.R., 3, 84, 86, 92, 93, 173–177 Pragmatic maxim, 23–26, 31, 32, 36, 41, 50, 94, 97, 99, 101, 119, 181 Press, S.J., 65 Preston, J., 75, 178 Priestley, J., 74 Prior, A.N., 8, 9 Proctor, R.N., 2 Propositions as instruments of inquiry, 88–91 Pseudo-science, 151, 154 Public and private sphere, 158 Public opinion, see Public sphere Putnam, H., xxii, 3, 27, 36, 38, 45, 68, 115

Q Quine, W.V.O., 101

R Ravetz, J., 167 Reasonable doubt, 54, 61, 63, 64, 68 Redfearn, A., 17 Relevance judgments, see Evidence Republic of Science and its two principles of co-ordination, 165 and the idea of a Community of Inquirers, 150, 151, 164–168, 173

Index Rescher, N., 101 Responsibility, 21, 53, 127–134, 141, 163, 174, 181 Reynolds, A., 101 Rhodes, R., 51, 97, 130 Richardson, H.S., 108, 113 Risk cultural theory of risk, 70–73 risky decisions, 50, 53, 55, 58 Robbins, L., 4, 123 Rolston III, H., 123 Rorty, R., xxii, 36 Rowland, F.S., 58 Rubbia, C., 95 Rudner, R., xxiv, 49–55, 57, 62, 65, 97, 129 Russell, B., 29, 133, 159 Ryle, G., 89

S Sagan, C., 153 Salmon, W., 153 Sarkar, S., 18, 41, 125 Sartori, G., 147 Schaffer, S., 168 Scheffler, I., 86, 87 Scheffler, S., 30 Schiller, F.C.S., xxiii Schwarz, M., 70, 71, 73 Science as an activity vs. as a system of assertions, 22 pure and applied, 88, 96 Science and Technology Studies three waves of STS, 169, 170 Scientific theories and laws as material rules of inference, 89 as true in relevant domains, 92 Selinger, E., 178 Semantic realism, 89, 119 Semenza, C., 77–79 Semenza, E., 77–79 Sen, A., 38, 39 Shanks, N., 21 Shapin, S., 72, 168 Shearmur, J., 174 Shea, W., 44 Shrader-Frechette, K.S., 70, 71 Sleeper, R.W., 119 Slezak, P., 168 Sociobiology, 4, 11–13 Soddy, F., 137 Sokal, A., xiv, xvi Solomon, S., 56 Species, 17, 40, 41, 139

Index Spencer, H., 10–14 Stagl, S., 124 Statistics Bayesian statistics, 65, 67, 68 classical statistics, 51, 53, 63, 65, 67 Steele, K., 50 Sterelny, K., 4 Stocker, M., 108 Syllogistics, 8, 10 Szilard, L., 130, 136, 137

T Tacit knowledge, 94, 160, 161, 164–166 Talisse, R., 87, 116, 146, 147, 149, 150 Tanur, J.M., 65 Tarski, A., 99 Technology language as technology, 21–27 technology different from ‘technics’ and ‘applied science, 94, 95 technology made up of physical instruments, 120 Teller, E., 51 Thayer, H.S., 91 Thick and thin concepts, 30 Thompson, M., 70, 71, 73 Thomson, J., 120 Thomson, J.J., 122 Toulmin, S., 9, 10 Transactional relationships between knowledge and reality, 116–123, 183 between knowledge, reality and morality, 120, 122 Transactions indirect consequences of transactions, 158, 159, 161 (see also Public opinion) Truth double theory of truth, 169–171 morality and truth, 100, 102, 103

199 pragmatist theory of truth, 99, 105, 115, 116 truth and convergence of opinions, 102 truth as correspondence, 99

U Unpredictability thesis anticipations vs. predictions, 136, 137 Urbach, P., 65

V Vajont dam, 76–80, 163 Value-free science, vii, 2–6, 8–13, 15, 18, 23, 49, 55, 56, 67, 69, 108, 137, 138, 140, 141, 182 Values, see Ends as termination van der Meer, S., 95 Vavilov, N., 137 Väyrynen, P., 31 Velikovsky, I., 152, 153 Virtues moral and epistemic virtues, 149 virtues and values, 148, 150

W Weber, M., 2 Wegener, A.L., 90 Welfare economics, 37–39, 123 White, M.G., 2 Wiener, N., 127–132 Wiggins, D., 105 Wildawsky, A., 70, 71 Williams, B., 28–31 Wilson, D.S., 10, 11 Wilson, E.O., 4, 11–14, 40 Winsberg, E., 65 Wittgenstein, L., 36 Wynne, B., 77, 170