In the next Perspectives on Science seminar, Brian Nosek (University of Virginia) will give a talk on “Shifting incentives from getting it published to getting it right“.
The seminar takes place in hybrid format in person and online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on Monday the 30th of January 2023. To join the seminar, please contact jessica.north@helsinki.fi for the location or Zoom invitation.
Perspectives on Science is a weekly research seminar which brings together experts from science studies and philosophy of science. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar here.
Abstract:
The currency of academic science is publishing. Producing novel, positive, and clean results maximizes the likelihood of publishing success because those are the best kind of results. There are multiple ways to produce such results: (1) be a genius, (2) be lucky, (3) be patient, or (4) employ flexible analytic and selective reporting practices to manufacture beauty. In a competitive marketplace with minimal accountability, it is hard to avoid (4). But, there is a way. With results, beauty is contingent on what is known about their origin. With methodology, if it looks beautiful, it is beautiful. The only way to be rewarded for something other than the results is to make transparent how they were obtained. With openness, I won’t stop aiming for beautiful papers, but when I get them, it will be clear that I earned them.
Author bio:
Brian Nosek is co-Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Open Science (http://cos.io/) that operates the Open Science Framework (http://osf.io/). COS is enabling open and reproducible research practices worldwide. Brian is also a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Virginia. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 2002. He co-founded Project Implicit (http://projectimplicit.net/), an multi-university collaboration for research and education investigating implicit cognition–thoughts and feelings that occur outside of awareness or control. Brian investigates the gap between values and practices, such as when behavior is influenced by factors other than one’s intentions and goals. Research applications of this interest include implicit bias, decision-making, attitudes, ideology, morality, innovation, and barriers to change. Nosek applies this interest to improve the alignment between personal and organizational values and practices. In 2015, he was named one of Nature’s 10 and to the Chronicle for Higher Education Influence list.
In the first Perspectives on Science seminar of the year, Vanessa Seifert (University of Athens) will give a talk on “The periodic table as law(s) of nature“.
The seminar takes place in hybrid format in person and online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on the 16th of January 2023. To join the seminar, please contact jessica.north@helsinki.fi for the location or Zoom invitation.
Perspectives on Science is a weekly research seminar which brings together experts from science studies and philosophy of science. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar here.
Abstract:
The periodic table as law(s) of nature
Chemists often refer to the periodic table as the ‘periodic law’. However whether it actually refers to a law of nature is far from evident. To this end, I identify what kind of relationships are represented in the periodic table and claim that the table identifies various law-like regularities about (different groups of) chemical elements. Secondly, I present some key features typically assigned to laws and argue that they are satisfied by the periodic table. Thirdly, I consider two potential problems to the claim that the periodic table represents laws of nature. The first concerns the existence of alternative representations of the table. The second problem concerns the potential reducibility of the periodic table to quantum physics. All in all, whether the periodic table represents a law of nature is far from uncontroversial. Nevertheless, it is a novel issue within the metaphysics of science that could not only inform our understanding of laws, but also make us appreciate in a new way the enormous significance of the periodic table.
Author bio:
Vanessa Seifert currently works as a postdoctoral researcher in the project NoMoS at the University of Athens. She has worked as a researcher at the University of Bristol where she also completed her PhD in philosophy. She has a master’s in philosophy of science from the LSE and her undergraduate studies were in chemical engineering. She has published in several journals (incl. Philosophy of Science, British Journal for Philosophy of Science, and European Journal for Philosophy of Science) around topics on reduction, scientific realism, models and idealisations. She is interested in exploring these topics primarily from the perspective of chemistry, and has written about them in popular science journals, such as The Conversation and Chemistry World.
In the next Perspectives on Science seminar, Carlo Martini (Vita-Salute San Raffaele University Milan) and Mason Majszak (University of Bern) will give a talk on “Values within boundaries – Climate science and tipping points“.
The seminar takes place in hybrid format in person and online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on the 12th of December. To join the seminar, please contact jessica.north@helsinki.fi for the location or Zoom invitation.
Perspectives on Science is a weekly research seminar which brings together experts from science studies and philosophy of science. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar here.
Abstract:
It is often argued that non-epistemic values can play the role of both biases (Lloyd 2006, 244-45) and background assumptions (Parker and Winsberg 2018) in scientific research, with the possibility of resulting in both a positive and/or negative impact on science. This has caused a discussion to arise on when the use of non-epistemic values should be considered legitimate or illegitimate in scientific research, and more specifically in the climate modeling context (Intemann 2015). However, identifying the legitimate use of values tends to become more complicated when discussing science-based policy making and further scientific communication, where values can play a larger and, as we will argue, a slightly different role. In this paper we look at the interplay of science and values on a topic of growing interest in climate science and the larger society: climate tipping points.
While there exists a theoretical and mathematical account of the concept of tipping points in the climate system the scientific community has not reached agreement on any specific tipping point – i.e. ice collapse in Antarctica or Greenland, boreal forest dieback, changes in the frequency or amplitude of the El Niño Southern Oscillation, etc. – nor on its physical mechanisms, as well as the uncertainty or likelihood of these tipping points occurring under certain climate scenarios (Lenton et al. 2008). As a result, some have argued that “the possibility of global tipping remains highly speculative” (Lenton et al. 2019). In turn, tipping points can, in general, be considered as highly uncertain but potentially highly impactful events.
Even though the uncertainty surrounding climate tipping point is extremely high, this concept has made its way into the popular culture discussions on climate change, where usually subtleties tend to disappear, including considerations about uncertainty levels (Schneider 2016). News outlets, in multiple countries, have highlighted concerns of potential climate catastrophe around tipping point events. Illustrating that not only a large cross section of individuals in our global society are aware of this scientific concept but that they are also concerned about the potential of crossing one of these tipping point thresholds. This presents an interesting case where there is currently high uncertainty within the scientific community, regarding the likelihood of a climate tipping point event of global magnitude occurring, however the importance and relevance of tipping points for decision making is relatively agreed upon within our larger society, as demonstrated by the recent survey by The Global Commons Alliance. They have reported that “among G20 countries, 73% of people believe Earth is close to ‘tipping points’ because of human action” (Gaffney et al. 2021, 4).
We argue that this divergence highlights the role values play in the communication of scientific information and, in this context, claims about climate tipping points. Despite the statement that values play a role in science, it is not always clear the way values play a role in how information is framed or presented. We will show how values are introduced and used in the scientific communication surrounding climate tipping points, by discussing a number of prominent papers, written by climate scientists, that have a specific focus on a wider public audience. These examples will illustrate the way values, specifically the precautionary principle as an evaluative value set, are used by experts to fill the knowledge gaps during scientific communication. This brings up questions of legitimate vs the illegitimate use of values in climate science and the scientific communication on tipping points. We begin to address these questions and contrast the difference in using these values to legitimately support further research/inquiry into climate tipping points and the use of these values to illegitimately fuel or support climate alarmism.
Author bios:
Carlo Martini is an Associate Professor in Philosophy of Science at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University (Milan) and visiting researcher at the University of Helsinki. He has worked on the interface between science and policy, scientific expertise, and science communication. He is leader of the work package “Behavioral Tools for Building Trust” in the H2020 Project “Policy, Expertise and Trust” (https://peritia-trust.eu)
Mason Majszak is a PhD student at the University of Bern, in Switzerland, where he is a part of the Epistemology of Climate Change working group and holds joint membership within the Institute for Philosophy as well as the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR). His work focuses on expertise in climate science and methodological issues in climate science more generally. Before arriving in Switzerland Mason completed his master’s degree in the UK at the London School of Economics with a thesis titled “A Critical Analysis of the Methodology for the Detection and Attribution of Climate Change”.
In the next Perspectives on Science seminar, Säde Hormio and Samuli Reijula (University of Helsinki) will give a talk on “Universities as anarchic knowledge institutions.
The seminar takes place in hybrid format in person and online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on the 5th of December. To join the seminar, please contact jessica.north@helsinki.fi for the location or Zoom invitation.
Perspectives on Science is a weekly research seminar which brings together experts from science studies and philosophy of science. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar here.
Abstract:
Universities are knowledge institutions. Compared to several other knowledge institutions (e.g., think tanks, schools, government research organisations), universities have unusual, anarchic, organisational features. We argue that such anarchic features are not necessarily a weakness. Rather, they reflect the special standing of universities among knowledge institutions. We argue that the distributed, self-organising mode of knowledge production maintains a diversity of approaches, topics and solutions needed in frontier research, which involves generating relevant knowledge under uncertainty. Organisational disunity and inconsistencies should sometimes be protected by institutional structures and procedures in order for universities to best serve their purpose as knowledge institutions. The quality control for the knowledge produced in a university comes from knowledge fields, clusters of knowledge and research that exist beyond the confines of individual organisations. The diversity of epistemic contributions is therefore kept in check by the order imposed by the internal logic of science as a social practice. Our argument provides a new defence of autonomy of research conducted at universities.
Author bios:
Säde Hormio is a postdoctoral researcher in Practical Philosophy at the University of Helsinki and a member of TINT. Her research focuses on social epistemology and collective responsibility.
Samuli Reijula is an Academy of Finland research fellow (2020-2025) and a university lecturer in theoretical philosophy at the University of Helsinki.
In the next Perspectives on Science seminar, Pekka Syrjänen (University of Helsinki) will give a talk on “Novel prediction and the selectionist challenge”.
The seminar takes place in hybrid format in person and online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on the 14th of November. To join the seminar, please contact jessica.north@helsinki.fi for the location or Zoom invitation.
Perspectives on Science is a weekly research seminar which brings together experts from science studies and philosophy of science. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar here.
Abstract:
One of the most prominent arguments for scientific realism is that it is the only view that does not make the success of science ‘a miracle.’ van Fraassen famously challenged the Miracle argument, arguing that it is no surprise that empirically successful theories survive in the scientific process, as scientists actively select empirically successful theories. Realists often argue that van Fraassen’s response is uncompelling, because it does not challenge realism’s explanation for the novel predictive success of scientific theories. I present a new version of the selectionist argument that responds to the realist’s objection and challenges the novelty-based Miracle argument.
Author bio:
Pekka Syrjänen is a doctoral student in theoretical philosophy at the University of Helsinki. His PhD research focuses on the epistemic value of prediction in science.
In the next Perspectives on Science seminar, Corey Dethier (Leibniz Universität Hannover) will give a talk on “How should the IPCC present uncertainty?”.
The seminar takes place online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on the 31st of October. To join the seminar, please contact jessica.north@helsinki.fi for the Zoom invitation.
Perspectives on Science is a weekly research seminar which brings together experts from science studies and philosophy of science. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar here.
Abstract:
At present, the IPCC has a unique two-tier method for communicating uncertainty: claims about (e.g.) future warming are qualified using both “likelihood” and “confidence” scales. Recently, however, a number of climate scientists have called attention to the weaknesses of this method, arguing that it is confusing, hard to understand, and used in different ways by different author groups. In this talk, I consider what a better alternative might look like. I begin by arguing that good science communication is like good science modeling: it highlights or emphasizes what’s important by abstracting away from the unimportant. The IPCC’s current approach can be thought of as emphasizing two features of the IPCC’s knowledge: the degree of imprecision or uncertainty and origins of imprecision or uncertainty. I suggest that there are reasons why we should prioritize emphasizing imprecision, but that the origins of uncertainty are less important. Finally, I consider a few different options for capturing imprecision and consider some broader lessons for science communication.
Author bio:
Corey Dethier is postdoctoral fellow at Leibniz Universität Hannover with the research group “Integrating Ethics and Epistemology of Science.” His work focuses on uncertainty in climate science and how can and should respond to it.
In the next Perspectives on Science seminar, N. Emrah Aydinonat (University of Helsinki) will give a talk on “The puzzle of model-based explanations”.
The seminar takes place online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on the 17th of October. To join the seminar, please contact jessica.north@helsinki.fi for the Zoom invitation.
Perspectives on Science is a weekly research seminar which brings together experts from science studies and philosophy of science. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar here.
Abstract:
Almost everyone agrees that one of the many functions of scientific models is the help scientists explain real-world phenomena. Nevertheless, there is no agreement about how models perform this function. How do models explain? What is the relation between models and explanations? Can idealized models, which contain falsehoods, provide true explanations? This talk gives a brief overview of the philosophical literature on the so-called model explanations and outlines a framework to understand the explanatory role of idealized models.
Author bio:
N. Emrah Aydinonat (PhD, Docent) is a researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki and TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science. He is one of the chief editors of the Journal of Economic Methodology (w/ J. Vromen). He is a member of the board of directors of the International Network for Economic Method (INEM), the editorial board of the History of Economic Ideas and the International Advisory Board of The Review of Evolutionary Political Economy (REPE). He is the author of The Invisible Hand in Economics (Routledge, 2008) and the co-editor of Economics Made Fun: Philosophy of the pop-economics (Routledge, 2015). Aydinonat is currently working on an Academy of Finland research project entitled Economics as Serviceable Social Knowledge (ESSK) led by Uskali Mäki at University of Helsinki. More information at http://neaydinonat.com
In the next Perspectives on Science seminar, Mary S. Morgan (London School of Economics) will give a talk on “Narrative: A General Purpose Technology for Science”.
The seminar takes place online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on the 3rd of October. To join the seminar, please contact jessica.north@helsinki.fi for the Zoom invitation.
Perspectives on Science is a weekly research seminar which brings together experts from science studies and philosophy of science. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar here.
Abstract:
Narrative is ubiquitous inside the sciences. While it might be hidden, evident only from its traces, it can be found regularly in scientists’ accounts both of their research, and of the natural, human and social worlds they study. Investigating the functions of narrative, it becomes clear that narrative-making provides scientists a means of making sense of the phenomena in their field, that narrative provides a means of representing that knowledge, and that narrative may even provide the site for scientific reasoning. Narrative emerges as a ‘general purpose technology’, used in many different forms in different sites of science, enabling scientists to figure out and express their scientific knowledge claims. Understanding scientists’ use of narrative as a sense-making technology suggests that narrative functions as a bridge between the interventionist practices of science and the knowledge gained from those practices.
Abstract from Narrative Science:Reasoning, Representing and Knowing since 1800, edited M.S. Morgan, K.M. Hajek and D.M. Berry (CUP, 2022).]
Author bio:
Mary S. Morgan is the Albert O. Hirschman Professor of History and Philosophy of Economics at the London School of Economics; she is a Fellow of the British Academy (and served as Vice President 2014-6), and an Overseas Fellow of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is currently President-Elect of the Royal Economic Society, to become President for 2023-4.
In the first Perspectives on Science seminar of autumn 2022, Adrian Blau (King’s College London) will give a talk on “The Logic of Inference of Thought Experiments in Moral and Political Philosophy: Scientific Parallels”.
The seminar takes place in hybrid format, both in person at Metsätalo (University of Helsinki) and online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on the 19th of September. To join the seminar, please contact jessica.north@helsinki.fi for the location details or Zoom invitation.
Perspectives on Science is a weekly research seminar which brings together experts from science studies and philosophy of science. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar here.
Abstract:
Thought experiments are a key tool in political theory and philosophy, but they remain controversial. I first justify thought experiments in new ways, for instance by showing their role in conceptual analysis, and by denying the false dichotomy between ‘real’ examples and hypothetical thought experiments. I then highlight important and largely overlooked parallels between thought experiments in political philosophy and comparison in the natural and social sciences. This gives us powerful tools for testing and improving thought experiments, by using ideas like internal and external validity, controlled comparison, omitted variable bias, interaction effects, spurious correlations, testable implications, and parsimony. Focusing on variables is the key. This helps me address longstanding debates about ‘weird’ and ‘wacky’ thought experiments. Without exaggerating the scientific parallels – there are also important differences – this paper shows significant links between political philosophy and political science, and offers new insights into whether and how to use thought experiments, and about their limitations.
Author bio:
Adrian Blau was an undergraduate at Cambridge and did his Masters and PhD in Oxford. Since 2011 he has worked in the Political Economy department at King’s College London, where he is now a professor. He edited the first ever textbook in political theory methods, Methods in Analytical Political Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2017), and has published more than 10 articles and book chapters on the methodology of history of political thought, including articles in the American Journal of Political Science (“How [not] to use the history of political thought for contemporary purposes”, 2021) and the Journal of Politics (“Anti-Strauss”, 2012). He also works on democratic theory and practice, on post-truth politics, on rationality, on Habermas, and on the political theory of Thomas Hobbes.
The seminar program for autumn 2022 is here, with international experts giving talks on their recent research as well as upcoming and published papers. This semester the seminar will be organised in hybrid format, with the possibility of in-person meetings as well as keeping the option to join via Zoom.
The seminar runs on a bi-weekly basis, the first session being on the 19th of September with Adrian Blau from King’s College London giving a talk on The Logic of Inference of Thought Experiments in Moral and Political Philosophy: Scientific Parallels.
Everyone is welcome to join! See the seminar page for updates and to attend.
In the last Perspectives on Science seminar of the semester, on Monday 6.6., Paul Thagard (University of Waterloo) will give a presentation titled “MisInformation: How Information Works, Breaks, and Mends”. The seminar takes place in Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 EET.
Perspectives on Science is a weekly research seminar which brings together experts from science studies and philosophy of science. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar here.
JOINING THE SEMINARS: To get a link for joining the seminars in Zoom, please contact research assistant jessica.north@helsinki.fi
Abstract:
Barack Obama has described disinformation as the single biggest threat to democracy. Misinformation is also threatening medicine, science, politics, social justice, and international relations, in problems such as vaccine hesitancy, climate change denial, conspiracy theories, claims of racial inferiority, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Dealing with misinformation requires explanation of how information is generated and spread, and how it breaks down but can be mended. This talk offers a new theory of information and misinformation that provides concrete advice on how improved thinking and communication can benefit individuals and societies.
Author bio:
Paul Thagard is a philosopher, cognitive scientist, and author of many interdisciplinary books. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Waterloo, where he founded and directed the Cognitive Science Program. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Cognitive Science Society, and the Association for Psychological Science. His books include the 3-book Treatise on Mind and Society published by Oxford University Press in 2019. In October 2021, MIT Press published his Bots and Beasts: What Makes Machines, Animals, and People Smart? In July, 2022, Columbia University Press will publish Balance: How it works and what it means. He is now working on a book on misinformation and planning a book on complex consciousness.
At the next Perspectives on Science seminar on Monday 23.5., Antoinette Baujard (Université Jean Monnet) will give a presentation titled “Ethical values and scientific integrity in normative economics”. The seminar takes place in Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45.
Perspectives on Science is a weekly research seminar which brings together experts from science studies and philosophy of science. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar here.
JOINING THE SEMINARS: To get a link for joining the seminars in Zoom, please contact research assistant jessica.north@helsinki.fi
Abstract:
This talk aims at discussing minimal criteria of scientific integrity in economics when social welfare is eventually the main challenge, as notably in welfare economics or in social choice theory. It is based on a typology of views regarding the positive-normative demarcation in normative economics (Baujard, A. Values in Welfare Economics, 2021, in Ch. 15: Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Economics, Conrad Heilmann and Julian Reiss Eds.). Elaborating on this typology, I first show that the best practices of scientific integrity should logically differ depending on how demarcation is viewed; I however emphasize that transparency rules and attention to entanglement issues remain prominent in every case. Second, focusing on normative transparency, I elaborate on a case study in voting theory, based on the experiment of different voting rules in French presidential elections: I defend my own view on the positive-normative demarcation, and the associated required values of scientific integrity in normative economics.
Author bio:
Antoinette Baujard is a Professor of Economics at Université Jean Monnet and a member of CNRS GATE Lyon Saint-Etienne. Her research is based on reflexive studies (concretely history and philosophy of science) on how economics deals with normative issues. It is meant to convey pragmatic knowledge regarding the properties of instruments of public decision, such as methods of evaluation of public policies, voting procedures, deliberative processes. She published papers in journals such as the Journal of Economic Methodology, Social Choice and Welfare, or The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, and book review in journals such as Economics and Philosophy, History of Political Economy or Oeconomia. Her last book, Welfare theory, public action and ethical values, co-edited with Roger Backhouse and T. Nishizawa, and published in 2021 at Cambridge University Press, revisited the history of welfare economics.
At the next Perspectives on Science seminar on Monday 9.5., Karoliina Pulkkinen (University of Helsinki) will give a presentation titled “Values in climate modelling: testing the practical applicability of the Moral Imagination ideal”. The seminar takes place in Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45.
Perspectives on Science is a weekly research seminar which brings together experts from science studies and philosophy of science. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar here.
There is much debate on how social values should influence scientific research. However, the question of practical applicability of philosophers’ normative proposals has received less attention. In this talk, I test the attainability of Matthew Brown’s (2020) Moral Imagination ideal (MI ideal), which aims to help scientists to make warranted value-judgements through reflecting on goals, options, values, and stakeholders of research. The MI ideal is applied to a climate modelling setting, where researchers are developing aerosol-cloud interaction parametrizations of a model with the broader goal of improving climate sensitivity estimation. After the identification of minor hinders to applying the MI ideal, I propose two more substantial ways for developing it further. First, its tools should be accompanied with more concrete guidance for identifying how social values enter more technical decisions in scientific research. Second, since research projects can have multiple goals, examining the alignment between the broader societal aims of research and the more technical goals should be part of the tools of the MI ideal.
Author bio:
Karoliina Pulkkinen is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki’s Aleksanteri Institute. Currently she is working on a project on the role of values in science in the Soviet Union with the aim of determining how past science can inform philosophers’normative guidance regarding the management of social, political, and epistemic values in scientific practice. She received her PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge. Her previous postdoc was at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in a project titled Values, Choices, and Uncertainties in Climate Modelling, which was a 2-year collaboration between philosophers and climate scientists in Stockholm. Her research articles have appeared in Philosophy of Science, Centaurus, and Ambix. Her recent comment for Nature Climate Change can be accessed here.
At the next Perspectives on Science seminar on Monday 28.3., Monika Krause (LSE) will give a presentation titled “Model Cases: On Canonical Research Objects and Sites”. The seminar takes place in Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45.
Perspectives on Science is a weekly research seminar which brings together experts from science studies and philosophy of science. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar here.
Model Cases: On Canonical Research Objects and Sites
Drawing on a comparison between the use of model systems in biology and practices in the social sciences, I distinguish between the material research object (what researchers study) and the epistemic research object (what researchers are trying to understand) to ask how social scientists chose the former. The selection of research objects is influenced by a range of ideological but also by mundane factors. Eurocentrism and historicist ideas about development over time, convenience, schemas in the general population and schemas particular to specific scholarly communities all sponsor some objects over others. Some research objects, which I call ‘model cases’, are studied repeatedly and shape our understanding of more general ideas in disproportionate ways. I discuss how an analysis of such patterns in collective knowledge production matter with a view to a discussion about collective, as well as individual methodology.
Author bio:
Monika Krause is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics.
She is the author of Model Cases: Canonical Research Objects in the Social Sciences. (University of Chicago Press 2021), “On Sociological Reflexivity”, Sociological Theory (2021) and “Comparative Research: Beyond linear-causal explanation”, in: Joe Deville, Michael Guggenheim and Zusanna Hrldckova (ed). Practising Comparison. Logics. Relations, Collaborations (Mattering Press 2016).
At the next Perspectives on Science seminar on Monday 28.3., Alessandra Basso (University of Helsinki) will give a presentation titled “Concepts of inequality and their measurement”. The seminar takes place in Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45.
Perspectives on Science is a weekly research seminar which brings together experts from science studies and philosophy of science. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar here.
Inequality is a thick concept, because it is not simply descriptive, but implies a moral evaluation too (1). Scientists and policymakers use the term ‘inequality’ to describe the empirical distribution of a certain resource across a population. But the concept also suggests a departure from some sort of desirable equity, and therefore calls for a moral judgment about which equality is socially desirable. For instance, an influential handbook about Development Economics defines inequality as “the fundamental disparity that permits one individual certain material choices, while denying another individual those very same choices” (2). Multiple factors contribute to permit or deny these choices. This definition, therefore, reflects a broad conception of inequality, which includes multiple dimensions (income, wealth, education, freedom, etc.) and encompasses both inequality in opportunities and inequality in outcomes. When it comes to producing empirical knowledge about inequality, however, the concept of inequality is redefined as a technical term, which is narrower and deprived of its evaluative content. For measurement purposes, income inequality is defined as “a property of a variable’s frequency distribution within a population” (3). National statistical agencies, for instance, measure income inequality among households with Gini coefficients, and this measurement, in turn, depends on precise definitions of income and household, and requires choosing weighting systems and statistical tools.
The reliance on narrow, technical terms raises concerns about the significance and the reliability of the empirical knowledge produced on the bases of these concepts. How relevant are these measurements for the broader, thick concepts implementers are interested in? In contemporary scientific literature, there is increasing awareness that inequality is multidimensional and morally-charged, and scientists have developed strategies to address this issue. Some works developed the idea that inequalities about other aspects of people’s well-being (like health, nutrition, education, and political freedoms) should be measured too (4). Others, instead, bring in a subjective conception of inequality, and measure people’s perceptions about inequality and their demand for redistribution (5). My paper discusses the potentials and limitations of these strategies. Both strategies have the potential to enrich the empirical knowledge based on narrow, technical terms and can provide a broader view. However, I argue that they face challenges that pull in opposite directions, and therefore are hardly compatible.
The measurement of multiple dimensions of social inequality faces the problem that no measurement can take into account all aspects of inequality at the same time (and scientists disagree about which aspects should be taken into account and why). If the concept of inequality is too broad, it may be unsuitable for use in science and policy. In subjective measurements of inequality, instead, it is difficult to trace the different factors that contribute to people’s perceptions and concerns, and this brings about issues of conceptual clarity. It is difficult to intervene directly on people’s perceptions in order to disentangle different factors, and the effects of interventions are hardly traceable (6). Subjective conceptions of inequality, therefore, tend to be much broader than objective concepts, even when these are enriched with multiple dimensions.
(1) Anderson, E. (2002). Situated knowledge and the interplay of value judgments and evidence in scientific inquiry. In In the scope of logic, methodology and philosophy of science (pp. 497–517). Springer.
(2) Ray (1998).Development Economics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
(3) McGregor, Thomas, Brock Smith, and Samuel Wills. 2019. “Measuring Inequality.” Oxford Review of Economic Policy 35 (3): 368–95.
(4) Chancel, L., Piketty, T., Saez, E., Zucman, G. et al. World Inequality Report 2022, World Inequality Lab.
(5) Ciani, Fréget, Manfredi (2022) Learning about inequality and demand for redistribution: A meta-analysis of in-survey informational experiments, OECD papers on Well-being and inequalities No. 02.
(6) Eronen, M. I. and Bringmann, L. F. (2021). The theory crisis in psychology: How to move forward. Perspectives on Psychological Science 16(4), 779-788.
Author bio:
Alessandra Basso is a PhD candidate at the University of Helsinki’s TINT centre for the Philosophy of Social Science. In 2022, she will join the Department of History and Philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge as a Newton International Fellow, funded by The British Academy. She received an MA in Philosophy from the University of Bologna and an MSc in Philosophy of the Social Science from the London School of Economics. Her doctoral dissertation concerns the epistemology of measurement in the social sciences, in psychology and psychiatry; it explores measurement practices in these fields and the specific challenges they face. Her current research focuses on the conceptual and methodological foundations of inequality measurement. Her articles have appeared in European Journal of Philosophy of Science, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, and The British Journal for Philosophy of Science.
At the next Perspectives on Science seminar on Monday 14.3., Keith Tribe (Tartu University) will give a presentation titled “Constructing Economic Science”. The seminar takes place in Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45.
Perspectives on Science is a weekly research seminar which brings together experts from science studies and philosophy of science. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar here.
“My new book Constructing Economic Science traces the transition of political economy from a form of public knowledge and political counsel into an academic science, mastery of which required systematic training. While the first three-year degree in economics was created in Cambridge in 1903, this was an inflection of an international argument for the development of commercial education, in Britain strongly represented in Manchester and then later by the LSE. The appointment of Robbins, who was hostile to commercial education, to a chair in economics at the LSE in 1929 fostered the creation of a replicable economics curriculum that structured the major British textbooks to the end of the century. But there was little interest in the UK outside school, college and university for graduates in economics. In general, British university education in the humanities and social sciences stalled in mid-century at the level of undergraduate education chiefly for lack of labour market demand for graduates, while in the United States graduate training developed strongly from the 1940s.
My presentation will first outline the “standard story” of the history of economics, which emphasises theoretical development, and suggest instead that an emphasis on teaching and the labour market provides a more promising line of analysis. I show how a “discipline” is the construct of academic institutions, rather than a process of progressive theoretical refinement.”
Author bio:
“Originally with a degree in sociology from the University of Essex in 1971, I did my postgraduate work from 1972 to 1975 at Cambridge, and my post-doctoral studies in Heidelberg and Göttingen 1979-1985. I was initially employed at the University of Keele to teach sociology, then in 1984 switched to the Department of Economics, retiring as Reader in Economics in 2002. From 2002 to 2013 I worked as a part-time rowing coach at King’s School Worcester and as a professional translator, also from 2005 teaching on the third year History of Economic Thought course at the University of Birmingham. I am currently an Associate Professor of History at Tartu University, Estonia.
My principal publications are: Land, Labour and Economic Discourse, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1978. (trans.) R. Koselleck, Futures Past, MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 1985/2004. Governing Economy. The Reformation of German Economic Discourse 1750-1840, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1988. Strategies of Economic Order. German Economics 1750-1950, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1995/2007. The Economy of the Word. Language, History, and Economics, Oxford University Press, New York 2015. (trans.) Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man and Letters to Prince Frederick Christian von Augustenburg, Penguin, London 2016. (trans.) Max Weber, Economy and Society. A New Translation, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 2019.”
At the next Perspectives on Science seminar on Monday 14.2., Remco Heesen (University of Western Australia) will give a presentation titled “How to Measure Credit ”. The seminar takes place in Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45.
Perspectives on Science is a weekly research seminar which brings together experts from science studies and philosophy of science. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar here.
There is a rapidly growing body of research on the epistemic consequences of the credit economy. This research investigates how scientists’ motivations, in particular their desire to be credited with important discoveries, affect their decisions regarding what science gets done and how it gets done, and whether this is likely to make for epistemically effective scientific communities. I briefly review this literature and highlight a commonly used assumption: that scientists are expected credit maximizers. This only makes sense if we assume credit can be quantified and measured on a so-called interval scale. Why should we think this? I propose three arguments for interval-scaled credit and expected credit maximization: one based on counting citations, one based on conjoint measurement, and one based on von Neumann-Morgenstern lotteries. I consider advantages and disadvantages of each and conclude that the latter is the most convincing.
Author bio:
Remco Heesen is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy (tenure track) at the University of Western Australia as well as a postdoctoral researcher (2019–2023) at the University of Groningen, funded by an NWO Veni grant. His research analyzes the social structure of science using a combination of philosophical analysis and formal methods. Recent work focuses on the epistemic consequences of scientists’ decisions regarding journal publications. How and why do scientists choose to share a given result rather than keeping it secret? How do scientists make the tradeoff between speed and accuracy in deciding how long to work on a project before attempting to publish it? What role does peer review play in the social structure of science, and how can this be improved?
At the first Perspectives on Science seminar of the year on Monday 24.1., Dunja Šešelja (Eindhoven University of Technology) will give a presentation titled “Scientific Disagreements, Fast Science and Higher-Order Evidence”, based on work co-authored with Daniel Cserhalmi Friedman. The seminar takes place in Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45.
Perspectives on Science is a weekly research seminar which brings together experts from science studies and philosophy of science. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar here.
Scientific disagreements are commonly considered an important catalyst of scientific progress. But what happens if scientists disagree while society is depending on them for quick yet reliable results? In this paper we aim to provide a normative account for how scientists facing disagreement in the context of ‘fast science’ should respond, and how policy makers should evaluate such disagreement. Starting from an argumentative, pragma-dialectic account of scientific controversies (Rodriguez & Zamora Bonilla 2013), we argue for the importance of ‘higher-order evidence (HOE)’, which has largely been neglected in previous discussions on scientific disagreements and controversies. We specify roles that HOE can play in the handling of scientific disagreements and provide guidelines for how scientifically relevant HOE is acquired. We illustrate our point with a recent disagreement on the aerosol transmission of the COVID-19 virus.
Author bio:
Dunja Šešelja is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Science and Technology at TU Eindhoven. She serves as an Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal for Philosophy of Science. Previously, she held visiting professorships at the University of Vienna and Ghent University, and postdoctoral positions at Ghent University, Ruhr-University Bochum, and MCMP, LMU Munich. Her research focuses on social epistemology of science and at the integration of historically informed philosophy of science and formal models of scientific inquiry. She is the PI of the DFG Research Network “Simulations of Scientific Inquiry” with the core at MCMP, LMU Munich.
At the next Perspectives on Science seminar on Monday 13.12., Samuli Reijula (University of Helsinki) will give a presentation titled “Division of cognitive labor: The costs and benefits of interdisciplinarity”, based on work co-authored with Jaakko Kuorikoski and Miles MacLeod. The seminar takes place in Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45.
Perspectives on Science is a weekly research seminar which brings together experts from science studies and philosophy of science. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar here.
Interdisciplinarity in its many forms is aggressively promoted in science policy across the world. It is seen as a necessary condition for providing practical solutions to pressing complex problems for which no single disciplinary approach can single handedly hold all the required answers. In this paper we model multi- and interdisciplinary research as an instance of collective problem-solving. Our goal is to provide a basic representation of this type of problem-solving and chart the epistemic benefits and costs of researchers engaging in different forms of cognitive coordination. Forms of cognitive coordination often found in multidisciplinary research projects result in a conservative bias, which hinders progress in tasks requiring collaborative interdisciplinary problem solving.
Author bio:
Samuli Reijula is an Academy of Finland research fellow (2020-2025) and university lecturer in theoretical philosophy at the University of Helsinki.
