Chasing values out of social science: can it be done?

1. Chasing values out of social science: can it be done? Philosophy 152 Week 5 Winter 2010

2. Three reasons to answer ‘No’ (beyond ‘filling in’) • Max Weber: social science must be about the concepts we care about. These will be value-laden. • John Dupre (and Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy): value laden social concepts ≠ positive features + value judgment. • So you can’t get rid of the value aspect and still study what you should ala Weber. • Amartya Sen: social scientists are agents and thus responsible for their actions, which should always be subject to moral judgment. Note: These don’t fall neatly into Douglas’s scheme. And they aren’t exclusive.

3. 1864 – 1920. One of the founders of modern sociology. Famous for, e.g., the claim that Protestantism caused capitalism. Max Weber

4. On value neutrality • There are lots of kinds of values: moral, political, aesthetic…AND lots of kinds of things we value: family, good food, decent society, fun, behaving like a decent person, welfare of others, … • Weber: Those necessary for social science are ‘what we care about’. What is it that we want to understand, to predict, to control?

5. Weber on Douglas’s stage 1 entry point for where values might matter • Negative claim: there is no ‘purely scientific’ criteria that can pick the topics for us. • Positive claim: they should be chosen according to what we value.

6. Weber on Douglas’s stage 2 entry point where values might matter On ‘subjective’ judgment: Two reasons why natural science methods aren’t enough, found in the topics of social science: • Social science studies singular events. • Because social science should study what we care about, it is stuck with its subject matter.

7. Reason 1 Social sciences study singular events or characteristics that do not repeat regularly. • Natural sciences study characteristics that recur frequently – chemical elements, masses, DNA,… • Social sciences are interested in special features that do not occur widely; indeed may only occur in a given culture at a given time because they are defined by their cultural significance. Maybe such features figure in ‘real’ exceptionless laws (e.g. like space-time curvature) but how likely is this – esp. given their cultural rooting?

8. Reason 2 Natural sciences can pick their concepts to match the laws. Social sciences must/should study the concepts we care about and must settle for the best understanding of their relations available. • Cf. Nobel prize winning founder of econometrics, Tyrgve Haavelmo – No-one expects physicists to predict the course of an avalanche. But we are expected to predict the course of the economy.

9. So… Social sciences study • singular claims • about funny concepts. Natural science method isn’t suited to either. What ‘fills in’?

10. Director of Egenis, the UK ESRC Centre for the study of genomics in society. Professor of Philosophy at Exeter University. ‘Stanford School’ John Dupre

11. Many concepts interweave reference to facts with value judgments: crisp, soggy; fresh, stale or rotten; vivacious, lethargic or idle;… • Social concepts especially: violent,… CLASS: more examples please. • Connection with Weber, but very specific worry: Replacing by pure facts loses reasons for action. • CLASS: Why for Dupre might physics be able to be more value free?

12. Rape: it is a mistake to view this as a ‘timeless essence’ the same in ducks and flies as in humans. CLASS QUESTIONS More example So what? Just what claim do these observations support? Inflation: ‘normativity comes a little later’: Sensitive decisions about how to measure it that have no scientific reason. Maybe make purpose-relative measures? At any rate, depending on how they will be used, they advantage different groups But who knows how they will be used? So: what to do? Dupre: two kinds of examples

13. Aside: For more info on inflation measures and values see J Reiss, Error in Economics

14. Born 1933 in West Bengal. Nobel 1998 ‘for his contributions to welfare economics’. Currently at Harvard (but appointments among others at Cambridge, Oxford and LSE). Master Trinity College Cambridge 1998-2004. Apart from technical work in welfare economics and social choice theory, his main contributions are in work on famine, development theory, the mechanisms of poverty and political philosophy. Amartya Sen

15. Claims vs actions • Sen (“Accounts, Actions and Values: Objectivity of Social Science”) distinguishes • The objectivity of claims • The goodness of accounts • The goodness of actions. • Social scientific claims and judgements about the goodness of accounts can be objective. Judgement about the goodness of actions are moral judgements.

16. Sen’s example BBC Panorama programme on brain death and kidney donations, October 1980. The programme cast doubt on the certainty of death of allegedly dead patients when their kidneys were removed.

17. Three questions • Were the claims true/ well supported? • Was it a good account of brain death and kidney removal? • Was the action of broadcasting the report right?

18. “’Should the BBC have given such an account?’ is a question about action judgement, not about account judgement.” • This question requires a “moral judgement” unlike questions 1) and 2). • But recall our worries about buried moral judgements in questions like 1). • We will sidestep the problems of ‘a good account’. • “The same applies to choosing…; selecting questions…, and picking the ways of presentation.”

19. Sen on actions • “The problem here isn’t fearing that scientific action might be value-loaded, but fearing that it might not. Value-loading here is not so much a right as a duty. An action by a person that is contrary to his or her values… remains pernicious in terms of his or her own values, even if it happens to be related to science.” • “… actions related to science are like all other actions, calling for evaluation, assessment, and scrutiny.” CLASS QUESTION: • More examples please. • Pros and cons please.

20. Using Sen’s distinctions • Measurement or modelling results – the numbers we get and claims we accept – may be ‘objective’. • But recall others: they may not be and the very concepts employed may be ineliminably value laden. • But • Choosing modelling assumptions and methods • Offering definitions of concepts • Using the results in particular ways • Calling concepts by certain names are actions and hence subject to moral scrutiny.