Values in Science 1

Paul Franco (University of Washington, Seattle)
I draw upon speech-act theory to understand the speech-acts appropriate to the multiple aims of scientific practice and the role of nonepistemic values in evaluating speech-acts made relative to those aims. First, I look at work that distinguishes explaining from describing within scientific practices. I then argue speech-act theory provides a framework to make sense of how explaining, describing, and other acts have different felicity conditions. Finally, I argue that if explaining aims to convey understanding to particular audiences rather than describe literally across all contexts, then evaluating explanatory acts directed to the public or policymakers involves asking nonepistemic questions.

Marina DiMarco (University of Pittsburgh), Kareem Khalifa (Middlebury College)
In this paper, we offer a new account of the role of values in theory choice that captures a temporal dimension to the values themselves. We argue that non-epistemic values sometimes serve as 'prediction tickets:' they can motivate pursuing questions in the short run, and the answers to these questions alleviate transient underdetermination in the long run. Because evidence ultimately determines theory choice, prediction tickets are compatible with an ideal of value-free science. Moreover, our account can still replicate many advantages claimed by critics of the value-free ideal, most notably those advantages claimed by inductive risk theorists.

Samantha Wakil (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
 Lloyd (2005) analyzes every proposed evolutionary explanation of female orgasm and argues that all but one suffer from serious evidential errors. Lloyd attributes these errors to two main biases:  androcentrism and adaptationism. But, there is an alternative explanation for the discrepancies in the case of the female orgasm that Lloyd’s analysis overlooks. I present and argue for the plausibility of this alternative explanation. In short, the alternative explanation is that an imprecise definition of orgasm is what’s primarily responsible for the missteps in this research domain. Further, Lloyd takes her analysis to support Lonigno’s (1990) Contextual Empiricist model. Insofar as Lloyd’s analysis does not capture an important part of scientific practice the alternative explanation picks out, this might reveal a shortcoming for Contextual Empiricism.

Blake Ginsburg (Michigan State University)
This paper makes a case for why anthropocentric bias must be taken seriously by feminist epistemologists and philosophers of science. I open by defending a notion of anthropocentrism that reveals the connections between forms of bias that harm humans and those that harm nonhuman entities. From here, I suggest that anthropocentrism is a feminist issue and attempt to show how feminist epistemologists and philosophers of science possess the methodological tools to address anthropocentric bias within the sciences. I then show how these methods might be used to address and challenge anthropocentric bias within urban ecology and cognitive ethology.