In the next Perspectives on Science seminar, Guido Caniglia (University of Helsinki) will give a talk titled “Impure evidence for sustainability transformations”.
The seminar takes place in person at Metsätalo and online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on Monday the 2nd of December 2024. To join the seminar, please contact jessica.north@helsinki.fi for the location or Zoom invitation.
Perspectives on Science is a research seminar which brings together experts from the philosophy of science and several fields of science studies. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar can be found on the TINT web page https://tint.helsinki.fi.
Abstract:
Biodiversity loss, climate change, rapid urbanization, and increasing inequalities are major sustainability challenges of our time. They are clearly messy, somewhat unsolvable, and often wicked. Similarly, the transformation processes that are advocated as necessary to address these challenges are complex, constantly emerging, and essentially uncontrollable. Yet, there is a problem in the way we think about the evidence produced through research about how to understand and foster sustainability transformations. Namely, we often work under the assumption that, in order to count as evidence-based, knowledge for actions, interventions, and policies needs to be purified and amended from the influence of the people, of the contexts, and of the processes that contribute to generating it. In my talk, I will argue that following epistemic purity is rather counterproductive. I will present cases of so-called transdisciplinary sustainability science and claim that we can retain important functions of evidence as supporting and guiding decisions and actions, while abandoning any pretense of epistemic purity. Relying on these examples and critically engaging with philosophical and STS literature on evidence for use and action, I will present a way of understanding evidence about and for sustainability transformations that praises and levers epistemic impurity. In this way, I will finally argue, evidence-based knowledge might support our capacities to muddle through the dirty waters of a world that we barely understand, can hardly anticipate, and definitely cannot control.
Author bio:
Guido Caniglia (he/him) is Associate Professor of Social Policy at the University of Helsinki. He previously worked as Scientific Director of the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (Austria). His work deals with the intersecting ethical, epistemological, and political dimensions of knowledge co-production both in theory and in practice. Guido recently acquired an ERC Consolidator Grant with the title: “Whose Sustainability? Understanding and redefining just sustainability transformations through disability and queer perspectives” (WEIRD). He earned a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Florence (Italy) in 2010 and a second PhD in Biology from Arizona State University (USA) in 2015.