See my tweets summarizing Day 2 and Day 3

Here’s what happened at Heather Douglas‘s Descartes Lectures & the associated conference, today. Or at least, what I Tweeted about it.

Preliminary Stuff

Rene Descartes Lectures starring Heather Douglas beginning shortly!

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

Director of Tilburg U: Nationwide annual academic topic of focus in the Netherlands: the Digital Society. Philosophy = important component.

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

Heather’s Lecture: “Science & Values: The Pervasive Entanglement

Heather Douglas: Thanks to Joyce Havstad and Ted Richards for reading drafts of the lectures & giving feedback.

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

HD: Science requires human sociality. Plurality in human societies = resource for science.

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

HD: Will avoid ontological claims about science-democracy relation, whether one is foundational for / causes the other. #DescartesLectures

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

HD: Enough that we want both science & democracy, and that there is a challenge about how they fit together. #DescartesLectures

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

HD: Democracy requires closure of decisions before consensus reached. Science rarely does. (But what about Pluto?) #DescartesLectures

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

The IAU closed the debate by voting on definition of planet, and thus the status of Pluto, before natural consensus. #DescartesLectures

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

HD argues that value-free ideal depends on context distinction (discovery/justification). [What if we TOTALLY remove that distinction?]

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

HD: Difference btw 'is' and 'ought' claims is crucial for imagining a better world. #DescartesLectures #ScienceValuesDemocracy

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

HD: Hempel was right – Normative claims provide no confirmatory weight to descriptive claims. #DescartesLectures #ScienceValuesDemocracy

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

HD: Feminist philosophy of science didn't show that sexist science wasn't science, but that it was weak science. #DescartesLectures

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

HD: No amount of evidence for a claim alone can bridge the gap to inference / assertion of that claim. #DescartesLectures

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

Heather Douglas #DescartesLectures #ScienceValuesDemocracy pic.twitter.com/JNhQXRVvDh

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

HD: Epistemic values speak to strength of evidence, but cannot tell us whether evidence is strong *enough* to warrant acceptance /assertion.

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

HD: To decide whether to step across inductive gap, we must assess the risks of error. #DescartesLectures #ScienceValuesDemocracy

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

HD: Alternatives to involving values in evidential sufficiency assessments are unworkable or disastrous. #DescartesLectures

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

HD: We need new ideals to replace value-free idea. [But do we need ideals? Or will non-ideal normative guidance do?] #DescartesLectures

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

Uh oh, here comes Lysenko. #DescartesLectures #ScienceValuesDemocracy

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

HD: Terrain of values in science is so complex than no single ideal is adequate. Diff't ideals get at diff't aspects. #DescartesLectures

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

HD: Direct/indirect role restriction 'ideal' is not much of an ideal. More of a minimum floor for adequate science. #DescartesLectures

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

HD: The interlocking character of norms and ideals for values in science ground the authority of science in democracy. #DescartesLectures

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

Fantastic first lecture by Heather Douglas. Published version will no doubt be a definitive version of her view on values in science.

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

Commentary on Douglas’s First Lecture

Now, for a ham-fisted commentary on that beautiful lecture. #DescartesLectures #ScienceValuesDemocracy #MyTurn

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

Didn’t tweet anything else about that, because I was giving the commentary! 😉

Kristina Rolin is up with her commentary on Douglas's account of the nested ideals for values in science. #DescartesLectures

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

KR: There are tensions btw ideals HD discusses. Especially btw cognitive diversity & shared standards / right values. #DescartesLectures

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

Q&A

HD: There's evidence that acknowledging value-ladenness of science doesn't (generally) undermine credibility of science. #DescartesLectures

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

Afternoon Sessions

Thomas Boyer-Kassem: Is value-free scientific expertise possible? Most think it depends on whether science is value-free #DescartesLectures

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

TBK: It is possible to have value-free scientific expertise, even though scientific knowledge is not value-free. #DescartesLectures

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

TBK: Experts are value-free when they sub values provided by external institution for their own values when making scientific judgments.

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

Seems there is an important distinction between not using values (value-free) and not choosing which values to use (value-neutral ala HD).

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

It turns out, by the way, that I was wrong about this. “Value-neutral” means something related, but different. There’s no place in Douglas’s view for what Thomas was talking about… but he still wasn’t talking about “value-free expertise”!!

TBK concludes VF expertise is theoretical process, but limited in practice. [But I think he's making a category mistake on "value-free."]

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

Dan Steel: "Sustainability" is a thick / mixed concept in env economics; scientists already recognize the value element. #DescartesLectures

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

DS: Environmental economists' assumption of infinite future is false. But is that a problem? #DescartesLectures

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

DS: Assumption of infinite future rules out plausible models that have intergenerational impartiality. #ScienceValuesDemocracy

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

DS: Normative models exist in science, and deserve more philosophical attention. [Yes!] #ScienceValuesDemocracy

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

Arthur Petersen's going to give a Latourian analysis of wonder and truth values in scientific practice. #ScienceValuesDemocracy

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

AP will connect Latour w/ Kuhn, Kant, W James, H Richert on phenomenon of *wonder* in scientific practice. #ScienceValuesDemocracy

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

AP: role of values in science connected w/ role of emotions in science, emotion of wonder is important case. #ScienceValuesDemocracy

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

I really like this point.

AP: Bacon – science must be scrubbed of emotions. vs. Polanyi – Intellectual passions play guiding role in science. #ScienceValuesDemocracy

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

Really enjoyed Arthur Petersen's interesting reflections and connections, but not sure what to make of it in the end. #DescartesLectures

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

In part, I think this is because my energy and attention span was really waning.

Alessandra Cenci: Need philosophical evaluation of health economics' welfare indicators. #DescartesLectures #ScienceValuesDemocracy

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

I won’t post the rest of my Tweets about Alessandra’s talk, because they weren’t very good, due to exhaustion.

Some encouragement

Thanks to @thehangedman for tweeting about Heather Douglas's #DescartesLectures https://t.co/PvvpUcfC30

— @alanrichardson.bsky.social (@arichardson_phi) September 5, 2016

My pleasure! First lecture was great, as is the associated conference so far. #DescartesLectures #ScienceValuesDemocracy

— Matthew J Brown (@thehangedman) September 5, 2016

On to Day 2!