Science as a justification for psychology as a social institution

Psychology seeks to justify its claims to privilege as a social institution largely on the basis of its scientific knowledge claims. These knowledge claims tend to be based on, and to reflect a particular view about the nature of science which is under increasing challenge. This situation is discussed and some of its implications examined.     

Language,Ontology, and the Carnap-Quine Debate

Philosophia - On a widespread reading, the Carnap-Quine debate about ontology concerns the objectivity and non-triviality of ontological claims. I argue that this view mischaracterizes...     

Causal Projectivism,Agency, and Objectivity

This article examines how specific realist and projectivist versions of manipulability theories of causation deal with the problem of objectivity. Does an agent-dependent concept of manipulability (i.e. the agency theory version of causal projectivism) imply that conflicting causal claims made by agents with different capacities can come out as true? In defence of the projectivist stance taken by the agency view, I argue that if the agent’s perspective is shown to be uniform across different agents, then the truth-values of causal claims do not vary arbitrarily and, thus, reach a satisfactory level of objectivity. My argument connects Price’s considerations on the situation of deliberation, whose structure, common to all agents, is the same with respect to both decision making and causal claims on a concept inspired by Douglas’s classification of objectivity of thought processes: the perspective of the detached agent. I further argue that, despite his agent-independent concept of intervention, Woodward’s claim of a stronger objectivity standard (i.e. agent independence) cannot be achieved, as the relativity of causal concepts to a variable set brings about the issue of the agent’s choice of variables. Consequently, a more permissive objectivity standard (admitting of the agent’s perspective) applies to both views.     

Kuhn and the science of religion

Ever since the challenge to the ‘received’ view of the philosophy of science—a view epitomized by Karl Popper and Carl Hempel—the status of science has been questioned. If radical critics of the received view—critics including Kuhn, Laudan, Feyerabend, the Edinburgh Strong Programme, and Latour—are right, can science, which means natural science, still be considered objective? Can it still be deemed the model of objectivity to be emulated by the social sciences and even by the humanities? Because religious studies is commonly assumed to fall short of the standards of objectivity of the natural sciences and even of the social sciences, what bearing does criticism of conventional philosophy of science have on it? Specifically, can the religionist approach to religion, the approach that purports to be the sole appropriate one for religious studies, be defended? Does radical philosophy of science, by challenging the objectivity of scientific claims, make the world safe for religious ones? This article will focus on the philosophy of Thomas Kuhn and will seek to determine what use defenders of religious studies can make of it.     

When consensus counts: Exploring the impact of consensus claims in advertising

Consensus claims are broad declarative statements used in an advertisement purporting that a majority of a certain group of consumers prefer or use the sponsor's product or service. While consensus claims are frequently used by advertisers, little is known about how they operate or their effectiveness. We utilize attribution theory to provide insight about how consensus claims operate, and to investigate the impact of consensus claims on attributions and brand attitudes. Results suggest consensus claims are an effective advertising strategy, but their persuasive impact varies according to the featured social information and the processing motivation of audience members.     

Standards of Scientific Conduct: Disciplinary Differences

Teaching of responsible conduct of research is largely predicated on the assumption that there are accepted standards of conduct that can be taught. However there is little evidence of consensus in the scientific community about such standards, at least for the practices of authorship, collaboration, and data management. To assess whether such differences in standards are based on disciplinary differences, a survey, described previously, addressing standards, practices, and perceptions about teaching and learning was distributed in November 2010 to US faculty from 50 graduate programs for the biomedical disciplines of microbiology, neuroscience, nursing, and psychology. Despite evidence of statistically significant differences across the four disciplines, actual differences were quite small. Stricter measures of effect size indicated practically significant disciplinary differences for fewer than 10 % of the questions. This suggests that the variation in individual standards of practice within each discipline is at least as great as variation due to differences among disciplines. Therefore, the need for discipline-specific training may not be as important as sometimes thought.     

Reduction, integrated theory, and the study of religion

The philosophy of science helps us to sort out and evaluate conflicting claims about reduction. Some persons maintain that reductions can be useful in constructing theories in science. Others hold that, with certain possible exceptions, reductions are likely to prove unproductive as well as inelegant. Such disagreements sometimes turn on differences in the scale or scope of the reductions envisioned. A promising strategy is to subsume considerations of reduction into efforts to find compatibilities among the claims and theoretical constructs of different disciplines. The postulation of compatibilities, advanced under rubrics such as ‘unified theory’, ‘consilience’, and ‘integrated theory’, holds great promise for studies of religion undertaken with reference to the contemporary cognitive and evolutionary sciences. Numbers of such studies view religious phenomena as, in part, expressions of evolved capacities and propensities that are not themselves necessarily religious.     

The ‘redefinition of death’ debate: Western concepts and western bioethics

Biomedicine is a global enterprise constructed upon the belief in the universality of scientific truths. However, despite huge scientific advances over recent decades it has not been able to formulate a specific and universal definition of death: In fact, in its attempt to redefine death, the concept of death appears to have become immersed in ever increasing vagueness and ambiguity. Even more worrisome is that bioethics, in the form of principlism, is also endeavouring to become a global enterprise by claiming neutrality. It appears that the discourse within both disciplines have similarly manipulated the boundaries of death to include the “dying”. This paper argues that the redefinition of death debate in biomedicine reveals a concept of personhood which is profoundly western in origin and which is in accordance to the concept adhered to within principlism. Biomedicine and bioethics do not appear to acknowledge the limitations of their own world view and hence lack an understanding of their applicability and appropriateness in diverse social and cultural contexts; a situation which adds credence to claims as to the hegemonic and imperialistic nature of all such global enterprises. Ms. Jones is an intensive care clinical nursing specialist. Dr. Kessel is a public health physician and medical ethicist.     

The psychology of meta-ethics: exploring objectivism

How do lay individuals think about the objectivity of their ethical beliefs? Do they regard them as factual and objective, or as more subjective and opinion-based, and what might predict such differences? In three experiments, we set out a methodology for assessing the perceived objectivity of ethical beliefs, and use it to document several novel findings. Experiment 1 showed that individuals tend to regard ethical statements as clearly more objective than social conventions and tastes, and almost as objective as scientific facts. Yet, there was considerable variation in objectivism, both across different ethical statements, and across individuals. The extent to which individuals treat ethical beliefs as objective was predicted by the way they grounded their ethical systems. Groundings which emphasize the religious, pragmatic, and self-identity underpinnings of ethical belief each independently predicted greater ethical objectivity. Experiment 2 replicated and extended these findings with a refined measure of ethical objectivism. Experiment 3 demonstrated the robustness of the religious grounding of ethics, and differentiates it from mere religious belief and from political orientation. The results shed light on the nature of ethical belief, and have implications for the resolution of ethical disputes.     

Science, Democracy, and the Right to Research

Debates over the politicization of science have led some to claim that scientists have or should have a “right to research.” This article examines the political meaning and implications of the right to research with respect to different historical conceptions of rights. The more common “liberal” view sees rights as protections against social and political interference. The “republican” view, in contrast, conceives rights as claims to civic membership. Building on the republican view of rights, this article conceives the right to research as embedding science more firmly and explicitly within society, rather than sheltering science from society. From this perspective, all citizens should enjoy a general right to free inquiry, but this right to inquiry does not necessarily encompass all scientific research. Because rights are most reliably protected when embedded within democratic culture and institutions, claims for a right to research should be considered in light of how the research in question contributes to democracy. By putting both research and rights in a social context, this article shows that the claim for a right to research is best understood, not as a guarantee for public support of science, but as a way to initiate public deliberation and debate about which sorts of inquiry deserve public support.     

Realism,relativism, and constructivism

This paper gives a critical evaluation of the philosophical presuppositions and implications of two current schools in the sociology of knowledge: the Strong Programme of Bloor and Barnes; and the Constructivism of Latour and Knorr-Cetina. Bloor's arguments for his externalist symmetry thesis (i.e., scientific beliefs must always be explained by social factors) are found to be incoherent or inconclusive. At best, they suggest a Weak Programme of the sociology of science: when theoretical preferences in a scientific community, SC, are first internally explained by appealing to the evidence, e, and the standards or values, V, accepted in SC, then a sociologist may sometimes step in to explain why e and V were accepted in SC. Latour's story about the social construction of facts in scientific laboratories is found to be misleading or incredible. The idea that scientific reality is an artifact turns out to have some interesting affinities with classical pragmatism, instrumentalism, phenomenology, and internal realism. However, the constructivist account of theoretical entities in terms of negotiation and social consensus is less plausible than the alternative realist story which explains consensus by the preexistence of mind-independent real entities. The author concludes that critical scientific realism, developed with the concept of truthlikeness, is compatible with the thesis that scientific beliefs or knowledge claims may be relative to various types of cognitive and practical interests. However, the realist denies, with good reasons, the stronger type of relativism which takes reality and truth to be relative to persons, groups, or social interests.This paper was presented at the 8th Inter-Nordic Philosophical Symposium, Oslo, 18–20 May 1989. Some ideas from this paper were first expressed in a lecture in Professor Aant Elzinga's seminar in Gothenburg, 22 April 1988.     

Historicism,Entrenchment, and Conventionalism

W. V. Quine famously argues that though all knowledge is empirical, mathematics is entrenched relative to physics and the special sciences. Further, entrenchment accounts for the necessity of mathematics relative to these other disciplines. Michael Friedman challenges Quine’s view by appealing to historicism, the thesis that the nature of science is illuminated by taking into account its historical development. Friedman argues on historicist grounds that mathematical claims serve as principles constitutive of languages within which empirical claims in physics and the special sciences can be formulated and tested, where these mathematical claims are themselves not empirical but conventional. For Friedman, their conventional, constitutive status accounts for the necessity of mathematics relative to these other disciplines. Here I evaluate Friedman’s challenge to Quine and Quine’s likely response. I then show that though we have reason to find Friedman’s challenge successful, his positive project requires further development before we can endorse it.     

Science and Morality: Mind the Gap, Use Happiness as a Safe Bridge!

In 2002 Sissela Bok re-published her book “Common Values”, first published in 1995, about her search for a minimal set of values to be respected all over the world. In her view such a set of values is needed to facilitate international communication and cooperation. Values already recognized in every society can be included as a starting point. In her book “Exploring happiness”, published in 2010, she explains why she finds happiness unfit to be included. She observes that there are discordant claims about what happiness is. Any particular vision can lead to practical choices that either adhere or violate the values she prefers. In my view subjective happiness should be included, because there are no discordant claims about the meaning of subjective happiness, and subjective happiness is simultaneously attractive as a moral value and as an object of scientific research. Subjective happiness can function as a bridge between science and morality. The only discordant claims are about ‘objective’ happiness, as a wider interpretation of well-being in the context of some specific morality or ideology.     

Davidson's Second Person

According to Donald Davidson, language is social in that only a person who has interacted linguistically with another could have a language. This paper is a discussion of Davidson's argument in defence of that claim. I argue that he has not succeeded in establishing it, but that he has provided many of the materials out of which a successful argument could be built. Chief among these are the claims that some version of externalism about meaning is true, that possession of a language requires possession of the concept of objectivity, and hence that the issue here concerns the identity of the external event that makes possible possession of the concept of objectivity. I end by presenting some reasons for thinking that only interpersonal linguistic interaction could play this role.     

Gossip, Humor, and the Art of Becoming an Intimate of Jesus

In Living Stories (Capps 1997) I addressed the rather broad consensus among clergy and laity alike that gossip is destructive of congregational life, a consensus based on the view that gossip invariably involves negatively critical conversations about other individuals and groups. However, this view is not supported by social scientific research and literary studies on gossip, which present a more complex picture of this form of human communication. On the other hand, the claim that gossip is trivial is more difficult to challenge, so I made a case for the importance of the trivial through consideration of the formal similarities between gossip and the narratives that comprise the Gospels, including the fact that both employ an “esthetic of surfaces” that focuses on specific personal particulars and that the stories that are told derive their power from the freedom that the participants in the conversation gain from entering imaginatively into the life of other persons. The present article furthers the exploration of the affinities between gossip and Gospel narratives by noting the role of humor in fostering good gossip and the mutually supportive role of gossip and humor in the art of becoming an intimate of Jesus.     

Why are some moral beliefs perceived to be more objective than others?

Recent research has investigated whether people think of their moral beliefs as objectively true facts about the world, or as subjective preferences. The present research examines variability in the perceived objectivity of different moral beliefs, with respect both to the content of moral beliefs themselves (what they are about), and to the social representation of those moral beliefs (whether other individuals are thought to hold them). It also examines the possible consequences of perceiving a moral belief as objective. With respect to the content of moral beliefs, we find that beliefs about the moral properties of negatively valenced acts are seen as reliably more objective than beliefs about the moral properties of positively valenced acts. With respect to the social representation of moral beliefs, we find that the degree of perceived consensus regarding a moral belief positively influences its perceived objectivity. The present experiments also demonstrate that holding a moral belief to be objective is associated with a more ‘closed’ response in the face of disagreement about it, and with more morally pejorative attributions towards a disagreeing other person.     

We Value What Values Us: The Appeal of Identity-Affirming Science

Members of the public (Study 1; n =  184) and university students (Study 2; n =  101) evaluated a piece of research and indicated their support for its continuation. The research findings were held constant, but the methods that revealed those findings were attributed to either neuroscience or social science, and the conclusions based on those findings were biased either in favor of men or in favor of women. Study 1 revealed that participants were more positive about research that affirmed their gender identity and that was based on neuroscience rather than social science. Study 2 found this pattern to be apparent in more specialist samples. Indeed, participants with some scientific training were more influenced by research that affirmed the reader's gender identity. Participants with less scientific training, in comparison, were more influenced by the type of science described when making judgments about the value of the research. Contrary to popular claims, this suggests that scientific knowledge alone is no protection against the effects of bias on research evaluation. Implications for the practice and popularization of science are discussed.     

Autonomy and Objectivity of Science

This article deals with the problematic concepts of the rational and the social, which have been typically seen as dichotomous in the history and philosophy of science literature. I argue that this view is mistaken and that the social can be seen as something that enables rationality in science, and further, that a scientific community as well as an individual can be taken as an epistemic subject. Furthermore, I consider how scientific communities could be seen as freely acting and choosing agents. Fundamentally, this boils down to the question whether we accept the voluntarist conception of human beings, one consequence of which is that scientists possess, in principle, the capacity for deliberative reflection and choice. If this is accepted, we can talk about the degrees of autonomy that communities possess. I also examine what kinds of decisions an autonomous community should make in order to produce objective knowledge. My suggestion is that objectivity be understood as intersubjectivity: a view is objective when it has been exposed to critical reflection from various points of view, and due to this, transcends subjective idiosyncrasies.     

Persons, punishment, and free will skepticism

The purpose of this paper is to provide a justification of punishment which can be endorsed by free will skeptics, and which can also be defended against the “using persons as mere means” objection. Free will skeptics must reject retributivism, that is, the view that punishment is just because criminals deserve to suffer based on their actions. Retributivists often claim that theirs is the only justification on which punishment is constrained by desert, and suppose that non-retributive justifications must therefore endorse treating the people punished as mere means to social ends. Retributivists typically presuppose a monolithic conception of desert: they assume that action-based desert is the only kind of desert. But there are also personhood-based desert claims, that is, desert claims which depend not on facts about our actions, but instead on the more abstract fact that we are persons. Since personhood-based desert claims do not depend on facts about our actions, they do not depend on moral responsibility, so free will skeptics can appeal to them just as well as retributivists. What people deserve based on the mere fact of their personhood is to be treated as they would rationally consent to be treated if all they had in view was the mere fact of their personhood. We can work out the implications of this view for punishment by developing a “hypothetical consent” justification in which we select principles of punishment in the Rawlsian original position, so long as we are careful not to smuggle in the retributivist assumption that it is under our control whether we end up as criminals or as law-abiding citizens once we raise the veil of ignorance.