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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
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    Non-epistemic values (such as ethical value judgements) l... — Carmelics
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    Home/Moral Responsibility
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    Non-epistemic values (such as ethical value judgements) legitimately enter into stages internal to scientific reasoning, including data collection and interpretation.

    Moral ResponsibilityTruth & Knowledge
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    Reasons For

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    Reason for
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    • 1.Scientists must make decisions—such as setting thresholds for statistical significance—that cannot be resolved by empirical data alone.
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    • 2.Such decisions require balancing the acceptability of false positives against false negatives, which is an ethical judgement.
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    • 3.The responsibility for these decisions cannot be offloaded to non-scientists.
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    Reasons Against

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    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.The argument conflates the context of discovery with the context of justification; ethical choices in experimental design do not thereby validate values within inference itself.
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    • 2.Reichenbach's distinction holds that normative considerations shaping data collection are external procedural constraints, not internal logical components of scientific reasoning.
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    • 3.A conclusion about threshold-setting being ethical does not entail that the epistemic warrant of resulting knowledge claims is partially constituted by those ethical judgements.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Heather Douglas's own 'indirect role' thesis concedes that values should constrain evidential standards without determining what the evidence itself means, preserving a principled boundary.
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    • 2.Allowing non-epistemic values a direct internal role in interpretation generates underdetermination-by-values, making scientific claims hostage to political contingency rather than empirical constraint.
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    • 3.The normative force of scientific consensus historically depends on its perceived insulation from interest-laden reasoning, so legitimising internal value-ladenness is self-undermining institutionally.
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    Moral ResponsibilityTruth & Knowledge

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    Consequentialism1 linkedSkepticism1 linked

    Related

    A conclusion about threshold-setting being ethical does not entail that the epis...Allowing non-epistemic values a direct internal role in interpretation generates...Heather Douglas's own 'indirect role' thesis concedes that values should constra...Reichenbach's distinction holds that normative considerations shaping data colle...
    +5 moreShow less
    Scientists must make decisions—such as setting thresholds for statistical signif...Such decisions require balancing the acceptability of false positives against fa...The argument conflates the context of discovery with the context of justificatio...

    Similar

    Disengaging from epistemic values means taking up a standpoint disenga...83%Analogical reasoning in general can be given a pragmatic justification...80%The value-free ideal (VFI) prescribes that scientific reasoning should...80%A complete analysis of the methods of scientific inference includes et...78%

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    SEP: science-theory-observation
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    Similarly, fine points can be made about the nature of values involved in these various contexts. Such clarification is likely important for determining whether the contribution of certain values in a given context is deleterious or salutary, and in what sense. Douglas (2013) argues that the ‘value’ of internal consistency of a theory and of the empirical adequacy of a theory with respect to the available evidence are minimal criteria for any viable scientific theory (799–800). She contrasts the
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    Details

    The normative force of scientific consensus historically depends on its perceive...
    The responsibility for these decisions cannot be offloaded to non-scientists.
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit