Philosophy of Science Fieldwork and Social Justice

Evelyn Brister (Rochester Institute of Technology) - Direct interaction with scientists and engineers is not new for philosophers of science; it is a disciplinary norm to understand scientific practice, and, frequently, to consult with scientists on our projects. However, it is rather less common to contribute philosophical analysis to the science-relevant work of others, which is what we call “fieldwork.” When doing field philosophy, we become integrated on a scientific team, we assist practitioners or community groups in developing a philosophically-informed outlook, or we consult on matters of scientific or medical policy. Opportunities for these forms of engaged work are likely to grow (Frodeman et al. 2013, Tuana 2010), and yet there are several barriers that limit involvement. I will address three concerns that limit opportunities to do fieldwork. First, I will address obstacles related to collaboration. Philosophers are trained to construct and critique arguments but not trained as carefully in collaborative skills or building relationships with non-philosophers. Second, we expect projects to fit academic time frames: flexible deadlines and done in a year or two. However, when working with policymakers or community groups, work is often required at times when others need it, not when our teaching schedules most allow it, and fruitful collaborations often require an investment of many years. This may mean that an investment does not yield full benefits for a young researcher until post-tenure. Finally, field projects are highly contingent: they depend on political stability, policy priorities, the interest of private and corporate entities, and others’ funding streams—and our institutional expectations do not allow most of us to take on this kind of risk. Strategies to encourage fieldwork demand changing disciplinary norms. For instance, philosophy should expand its evaluative criteria to recognize the intellectual merit and difficulty of field projects. In addition, we should develop institutional outlets for reporting on fieldwork projects and for sharing strategies for crafting and pursuing them effectively. We should also advocate for strong university support for such projects, since these projects lead to strong relationships between universities and communities, and since they are commonly pursued by philosophers who contribute to diversity in the academy. Finally, we can do more to call attention to the philosophical skills that suit philosophers to such projects: experience at abstracting away from detail and identifying high-level classifications, a willingness to bring together insights from disparate areas of inquiry, and skill in eliciting and guiding discussions of vision and values. Support for philosophical fieldwork is tied to the goals and insights of feminist philosophy of science. First, evidence shows that women students and researchers have a stronger interest in solving social problems than do their male counterparts. Second, many engaged projects have a gender or social justice component. As Goering and Pham show, this component may be implicit rather than explicit, and an orientation to feminist ethics, for example, may enable identifying it. Third, feminist inquiry endorses identifying how academic research can support marginalized groups. Fourth, feminist inquiry develops insights into the functioning of social institutions that may improve the efficacy of philosophers engaged in fieldwork.

Sara Goering (University of Washington, Seattle), Michelle Pham (University of Washington, Seattle) - For the past six years, Goering has led the ethics thrust in an NSF-funded engineering research center focused on neural engineering (the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering or CSNE), and Pham has served as a neuroethics fellow for three years. Our group has worked closely with an interdisciplinary team of neuroscientists, electrical engineers, neurosurgeons and rehabilitation clinicians to explore the ethical implications of innovative neural engineering research and development. Our version of field philosophy is based on multiple levels of ethics and broader philosophical engagement with scientists and engineers, from a fully-embedded, full-time philosophy RA who has a desk in the biorobotics lab, helps to run experiments, and is a co-author on most papers from that lab, to part-time ethics fellows who meet with lab groups, develop collaborative projects, and generally work to provide a liaison between the ethics group and the scientists. We have found that increased exposure – even if not always targeted specifically at ethical dialogue or problem-solving – allows for the development of trust and mutual respect, a crucial foundation for any successful transdisciplinary collaboration. Our projects have ranged from more theoretical conceptual and ethical work on issues such as privacy, narrative identity, and agency to more practical policy-oriented work on informed consent and ethical guidelines for BCI development and neurotechnologies. We have also done our own empirical research, using focus groups, interviews, and surveys to consult with important neural engineering stakeholders, including BCI researchers, end-users of the devices, and disabled individuals who are prospective end-users (see, e.g., Goering et al. 2017, Klein et al. 2015, Yuste et al. 2017, Specker Sullivan et al. 2017, Klein et al. 2016, Brown et al. 2016). Our experience has emphasized the importance of becoming part of the neural engineering team as collaborators rather than the “ethics police,” curious humanist outsiders, or IRB helpers. Doing so has demanded flexibility, persistence, openness to learning, humility, and the ability to translate matters of ethical significance into plain language. Even in a context where scientists recognized the need for input on ethical issues (vs. getting a top-down mandate from a funder or institution), we had to work to show the value of philosophical content, figure out ways to integrate it into the ongoing science and engineering work without sacrificing the rigors of our discipline, work to make our “products” intelligible in the world of engineered devices and electrodes, and remain nimble enough to shift directions when funders demanded restructuring or a new scientific focus. In presenting our group’s efforts at the annual site visits required by the funders, we went from being the odd group out (“and now for something completely different”) to having a fully integrated vision, where other teams referenced ethics group efforts, and we could demonstrate significant connections to every other research “thrust” of the center.