Is science value-neutral? Leslie stevenson

1. Is science value-neutral?Leslie stevenson Harold Patricio a. lamostre Msit – 1 History of philosophy of science

2. The Thesis of the Value-Neutrality of Science Can science give us objective answers to questions about values? A common response to the whole question of how science relates to values is to say that it is fundamentally and strictly value-neutral. Science, so this argument goes, neither invalidates all human values nor supports particular values, whether "good" or "bad". According to this view, science can deal only with facts, rather than values; with techniques, rather than goals; and with means to ends, rather than ends in themselves. The question of how to use the power that scientific understanding gives us, to what ends to apply the new techniques for changing the world that science offers us, is completely up to us. To invoke the commonly used phrase, all such questions are "for society to decide."

3. The following three claims can be distinguished as part of this image of scientific neutrality: 1: Science offers us objective knowledge of how the world works and hence of the consequences of various interventions in it, but there can be no such knowledge of whether we should make any particular interventions. A sharp distinction between facts and values is here assumed to rule out any knowledge of the latter, so the adoption of goals and policies is seen as a matter of merely "subjective” individual opinion. This separation of facts from values seems to follow from the impossibilities, as Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) said, of deriving "ought” from "is“ -a conclusion expressing a value judgment can only be deduced from valuation assumptions. Thus, well-known philosopher of science Carl Hempelargued that although hypothetical judgments like “If you administer 5 mg of cyanide to this baby, it will die" express scientific facts, categorical judgments of value such as "Killing babies is evil“ are "not amenable to scientific test and confirmation or disconfirmation“ (1960,45), According to this view science provides means ("instrumental“ values) but never ultimate ends. As German economist / sociologist Max Weber (1864 - 1920) remarked, science is like a map that can tell us how to get to many places but not where to go.

4. 2: According to the classic ideal, the only value recognized by the scientist as such, the only value actually involved in doing science, is that of knowledge for its own sake. She may welcome the possibility of useful applications of her research, but as a scientist she is devoted purely and simply to the extension of human knowledge as an end in itself. In this respect, she is just like her university colleagues the Sanskrit philologist, the medieval historian, and the pure mathematician, who delight in the achievement of new knowledge and understanding even if there is no prospect of its being useful in any practical way. As an eloquent nineteenth century expression of this view, consider this passage from the physicist Hermann von Helmholtz: Whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks after immediate practical utility, may generally rest assured that he will seek in vain. All that science can achieve is a perfect knowledge and a perfect understanding of the action of natural and moral forces. Each individual student must be content to find his reward in rejoicing over new discoveries, as over new victories of mind over reluctant matter, or in enjoying the aesthetic beauty of a well-ordered field of knowledge, where the connection and filiation of every detail is clear to the mind, he must rest satisfied with the consciousness that he too has contributed something to the increasing fund of knowledge on which the dominion of man over all the forces hostile to intelligence reposes. (Helmholtz 1893, quoted in Ravetz 1971, 39)

5. 3: The applications of scientific knowledge are for "society” to decide. The applied scientist or technologist is the servant of other people, using his expertise toward ends that are chosen in whatever way it is that individuals and institutions make such choices. Some believe that there is such a thing as knowledge of the right way for human beings to live -whether derived from an immemorial social tradition, a sacred book, an authoritative church, a theocracy of mullahs, the ideology of a ruling party, or an inspired leader. All these different believers can equally apply scientific knowledge toward their various (and perhaps conflicting) visions of what constitutes the good life for humanity. Those who are more skeptical about the possibility of knowledgeof values will typically suggest at this point that the ends to which scientific knowledge is to be applied should be determined by a democratic process that allows society's decisions to emerge from the mass of individuals, subjective opinions, U.S. physicist Edward Teller; has expressed this view as follows: The scientist’s responsibility is to find out what he can about nature. It is his responsibility to use new knowledge to extend man’s power over nature. . . . When the scientist has learned what he can learn and when he has built what he is able to build his work is not yet done. He must also explain in clear, simple, and understandable terms what he has found and what he has constructed. And there his responsibility ends. The decision on how to use the results of science is not his. The right and duty to make decisions belongs to the people. . . . The scientist has done his full duty only if he becomes a full participant of our vital, paradoxical, multicolored, democratic society. (1960, 21--22)

6. is Science Value-Neutral?: One standard response to the question of how science relates to values is to say that it is fundamentally and necessarily value-neutral. A distinction is made between the theories about laws of nature that purescience gives us and appliedscience or technology, in which human beings manipulate and change the world, trying to fulfil their various desires or goals. The applications of science are, to use an oft-repeated phrase, "for society to decide.” But how can decisions about how to apply scientific knowledge be made by society? Can scientific research and its technological applications be under the democratic control of the citizens who ultimately pay for it and are affected by it? There is really no such agent as "society" to make such decisions; that is, society is not an entity that can arrive at a decision, at least not when no practical possibility exists for all citizens to meet together and consider what should be done. The decisions of society are really the decisions of various institutions-governments, courts, corporations, banks, universities, churches, political parties, pressure groups, and so on and, of course, the decisions of individuals.

7. There are good reasons for wondering how far contemporary scientific research and its technological application is (or could ever be) under the democratic control of the citizens. Much vital research is now conducted under conditions of military or industrial secrecy. Another factor favouring those responsible for directing research is that they can usually determine how the matter is presented to the public, because of its very technical nature and the secrecy that usually surrounds it. With the aid of those skilled in the ways of the mass media, public opinion can be "moulded." Consider, for example, how the Strategic Defence Initiative was presented to the American public as "Star Wars“, thus associating it in the public mind with movies in which the goodies beat the baddies by clever technology. Who could disagree with SDI under that description?

8. Let us consider now the second point of the value-neutral conception of science: the claim that the only thing valued by the scientist is knowledge for its own sake. She would have to be a very "pure" scientist indeed who was content to hide her light under a bushel, who did not care in the least about her scientific reputation and professional advancement, not to mention the influence and rewards that success can bring. Very few of the scientists we have discussed would count as pure in this sense! But the areas in which funding, appointments, promotion, fame, and reward are to be found are determined by social forces outside the control of the individual scientist. Science is becoming a business; medical science in particular is now often spoken of as part of the medical industry. In his Herbert Spencer lecture of 1973, Popper expressed the concern over the change in the spirit of science that occurs when "to many dollars [chase] too few ideas“, Big science,“ he warned, "may destroy great science" (1975, 96).

9. So even though scientists may wish to say that their only professional commitment is to increasing human knowledge, they will now have to recognize that the funds for their research will probably be given with a close eye to possible applications, be they military, industrial, medical, or whatever. Doing research under these conditions cannot be said to be value-free. By accepting funds from certain sources and agreeing to make their results available to those funding them scientists are participating in social processes by which knowledge, and hence power, is given to certain social groups rather than others. For example, to industrial corporation, defense departments, or national institutes of health. The Frankenstein image never was very plausible for the average scientist (and the rare fanatical individual is fairly easily controlled). What we need to worry about much more is the power of the institutions that increasingly direct scientific research and it applications: the research councils, the commercial companies, the rich private foundations, the armed services, and the government departments, such bodies may be made up of reasonably well meaning individuals, each of them earning their living and doing their duty as they conceive of it, yet the institutions can act like corporate Frankenstein, pursuing power or profit regardless of social consequences. The fear is that deeper scientific knowledge will tend to put more power into the hands of those who are already powerful and who may well misuse it. Governments, the military, and industrial corporations may acquire even greater capacity to affect (for better or for worse) our way of life, our food, our health, and the environment.

10. Finally, let us consider again the first element in the conventional picture of the value-neutrality of science: that science can only deal with objective facts, not values. A sharp distinction between facts and values has been commonplace in twentieth-century thought, not just in the philosophies of positivism and existentialism, which have dramatized it most, but as a background assumption that conditions much everyday thinking. The widespread assumption that all moral (and political) values are subjective should certainly not be allowed to pass without question. Such a view represents a major claim in the theory of meaning, knowledge, and metaphysics that an unbridgeable chasm lies between the standards governing scientific claims and those governing moral claims,

11. We shall not try to settle here the debates about the objectivity of values that have been going on at least since the time of Socrates. But it is worth noting that the thesis of a unique objectivity of science might be attacked in two different ways, It may be suggested that science itself does not really have the kind of objectivity commonly attributed to it, or it might be claimed that discussion of values can in principle be as objective as scientific discourse is commonly thought to be. An example of the latter kind of argument can be found in the work of JurgenHabermas, who questioned what he called "scientism“ the positivist thesis that our very standard of what is to count as knowledge should be defined in terms of the natural sciences. He recommended "reflection" on the ends of our actions, and in particular on the applications that we may consider making of scientific knowledge.