tint Event, Perspectives on Science seminar

13.10. Perspectives on Science Seminar: Jan Sprenger

In next week’s Perspectives on Science Seminar, Jan Sprenger (University of Turin) will give a talk titled “The Productive Model of Explanation in Psychology and Beyond”.

The seminar takes place in Metsätalo (room 10), and  online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on Monday the 13th of October 2025.

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 webpage https://tint.helsinki.fi.

What: ”The Productive Model of Explanation in Psychology and Beyond” by Jan Sprenger

When: Monday 13.10.2025 from 2 to 4 pm (EEST, Helsinki time).

Where: Metsätalo (room 10), and Zoom.

Zoom link: Contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi for the Zoom link.

Abstract:

In their influential 1988 paper “Saving the Phenomena”, Bogen and 
Woodward argued that scientific theories do not, in the first place, 
predict and explain facts about observables. Rather, theories account 
for phenomena, which are placed at an intermediate level between data 
and theory. This work tries to take Bogen and Woodward’s thesis 
seriously: it develops a model of explanation based on a tri-partition 
between theory, phenomena and data. The model squares well with 
explanatory practices in  experimental psychology and the use of formal 
models and statistical analysis. Finally I show how classical 
philosophical models of explanation—the deductive-nomological model, 
the mechanistic model and the interventionist model—can be obtained as 
limiting cases of this more general account.

Bio:

Jan Sprenger obtained his PhD in 2008 from the University of Bonn in 
Germany with a thesis on confirmation and statistical inference. 
Subsequently he worked at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, from 
2014 onwards as Full Professor and Director of the research center 
TiLPS. In 2017 he moved to the University of Turin in Italy, his current 
affiliation. He directed numerous national and international research 
projects, among which an ERC Starting Grant on scientific objectivity 
(2015-2021). In 2019 Oxford University Press  published his monograph 
“Bayesian Philosophy of Science” (jointly with Stephan Hartmann). His 
current research interests focus on themes in semantics, formal 
epistemology and philosophy of science, such as indicative conditionals, 
counterfactuals and scientific explanation.


If you have any questions about the seminar, do not hesitate to contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi.

tint Event, Perspectives on Science seminar

10.10. Perspectives on Science Seminar: Katherine Furman

In the next Perspectives on Science seminar, Katherine Furman (University of Liverpool) will give a talk titled ““Doing your own research” and the Curious Case of Thabo Mbeki: Making implicit cases in philosophical reasoning explicit”.

The seminar takes place in Metsätalo (room 10) and  online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on Friday the 10thof October 2025. Please note, that this talk is exceptionally on Friday!

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 webpage https://tint.helsinki.fi.

What: “”Doing your own research” and the Curious Case of Thabo Mbeki: Making implicit cases in philosophical reasoning explicit”” by Katherine Furman

When: Friday 10.10.2025 from 2 to 4 pm (EEST, Helsinki time)

Where: Metsätalo room 10, and Zoom.

Zoom link: Contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi for the Zoom link.

Abstract:

Plenty has been written philosophically about the phenomenon of “doing your research”. That is, when individuals distrust the experts and try to rely on their own competencies to figure out scientific issues for themselves. Typically, the agents are non-specific – they are a philosophical construct for the purposes of theory development. However, what happens when we fill in the details? 

This talk offers a deep dive into Thabo Mbeki’s AIDS denialist policies in South Africa in the late 1990s and early 2000s. That is, the health policies that prevented access to HIV/AIDS treatment via the public health system. This was based on beliefs that HIV does not cause AIDS and that the prescribed medications are toxic. These beliefs were the result of Mbeki’s own distrust of mainstream HIV/AIDS science at the time and his resulting independent evidence gathering. Detailed analysis of this case suggest that it substantially deviates from the standard accounts of “doing your own research” in the philosophical literature. Overall, this talk argues that we need to be careful of who our hypothetical agents are in our theorising, because changing the cases can change the theory. 

Bio:

Katherine Furman is a senior lecturer of Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Liverpool. She predominantly works on philosophy and public policy, with a special interest in health policy development in contexts of distrust, especially in African countries. 

If you have any questions about the seminar, do not hesitate to contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi.

tint blog post, In Finnish

Hyödyn ideologia – Kritiikkiä Suomen Perustan Tutkimusta vai ideologiaa -raportista / Anita Välikangas

Ajatuspaja Suomen Perusta julkaisi syyskuun lopussa pamfletin otsikolla ”Tutkimusta vai ideologiaa? Analyysi suomalaisesta tiederahoituksesta”. Teknillisen fysiikan DI Mika Meranon kirjoittaman pamfletin pääviestinä on, että Suomessa suunnataan veronmaksajien rahoja holtittomasti väärille aloille ja aiheisiin. Pureudun tässä blogitekstissä raportin keskeisiin ongelmiin, etenkin sen hyödyllisyyttä koskeviin ajatuksiin.

Raportti ottaa kritiikkinsä kohteeksi erityisesti humanistiset tieteet ja yhteiskuntatieteet. Humanistista tutkimusta kritisoidaan hyödyllisyyden puutteesta; yhteiskuntatieteitä, erityisesti sosiologiaa, kritisoidaan puolestaan liiankin suuresta poliittisuudesta. ”On selvää, että tietyillä tieteenaloilla on keksimääräistä [!] enemmän hankkeita, joiden yhteiskunnallinen hyöty on alhainen tai kyseenalainen”, Merano kirjoittaa.

Raportissa viitataan monessa kohtaa siihen, että julkisten tutkimusrahoittajien tulisi kohdentaa rahoitus hyödylliseksi katsottuihin aiheisiin. Yksi toimenpide-ehdotuksista on, että Suomen Akatemia luopuisi eri alojen asiantuntijapaneeleista ja sen sijaan vain ”rahoittaa kaikista parhaat tutkimukset”.

Tämä hyödyn mittaaminen ja rahoituksen uudelleenjakoajatus ei ole niin yksinkertainen kuin millaisena kirjoittaja sen esittää. Raportin kirjoittajan toiveissa näyttää olevan, että julkisen tutkimusrahoituksen prioriteetit muuttuisivat tavalla, jossa ideologinen huuhaatutkimus katoaisi ja jättäisi jäljelle vain oikean, rehellisen tutkimuksen. Ehdotuksen ongelma on kuitenkin siinä, että kirjoittaja ei kykene tarjoamaan nykyisen järjestelmän tilalle muuta kuin toisenlaisen ideologian. Hänen korostamansa hyödyllisyys kätkee sisäänsä paljon politiikkaa. Sen nostaminen entistä suuremmaksi rahoituskriteeriksi on poliittisesti hyvin arveluttava, tieteellisen autonomian näkökulmasta pelottavakin vaihtoehto.

Arvovapaan tieteen myytti

Hyviä uutisia alkuun: raportti ei ole kokonaan tiedevastainen. Sen mukaan tiede on tärkeä asia. Kirjoittajalta löytyy sympatiaa myös ihmistieteelliselle tutkimukselle. Hän tunnustaa esimerkiksi, että historiantutkimus tai kielitiede kykenevät lisäämään inhimillistä ymmärtämystä ja olemaan monin tavoin hyödyllisiä.

Samalla kirjoittajalla on silti taustalla vahva positivistinen tieteenihanne. Tämän ihanteen mukaan on olemassa ”oikeaa” tiedettä, joka ei ole riippuvaista poliittisista agendoista, ja joka paljastaa todellisuuden ”sellaisena kuin se on”. Samalla Meranon mukaan tietyillä tutkimusaloilla tuotettu tutkimus on ”agendallista tiedettä”, jossa tutkijoiden arvovalinnat vaikuttavat haitallisella tavalla tutkimuksen sisältöön. Hän jaottelee eri tiedeyhteisöjä ja tieteenaloja tämän jaottelun kautta.

Raportti korostaa, että on tärkeää pitää yllä ajatusta tieteen arvovaltaisuudesta. Parhaiten tämä arvovaltaisuus onnistuu kirjoittajan mukaan silloin, kun tutkimusrahoitusta ei suunnata ”huuhaatutkimukseen” ja tutkijat pysyvät oman tieteenalansa asettamissa rajoissa. Analyysista puuttuu huomio siitä, että tieteenalat ovat jatkuvassa muutoksessa. Esimerkiksi tieteidenvälinen tutkimus haastaa jatkuvasti tieteenalojen välisiä raja-aitoja. Tieteidenvälisissä kohtaamisissa tutkijat tulevat luoneeksi myös uusia tieteenaloja ja tutkimustraditioita.

Yhtäältä Merano kritisoi osaa tieteenaloista, erityisesti sosiologiaa, siitä että he saattavat osallistua yhteiskunnan toimintaan liiankin aktiivisesti. Toisaalta samaan aikaan hän on harmissaan myös siitä, etteivät yliopistot tarjoa riittävästi eritaustaisille ihmisille mahdollisuuksia osallistua tasavertaisesti tiedettä koskevaan keskusteluun. Kritiikki jättää huomiotta sen, että yliopistoilla ja tutkimuslaitoksissa on tehty viimeisen kymmenen vuoden aikana paljon työtä tiedeviestinnän edistämiseksi ja luotu erilaisia keskustelutilaisuuksia ja -foorumeita. Tälle työlle on edelleenkin tarvetta.

Monet pamfletin keskeisistä väitteistä pohjaavat ajatukselle arvovapaasta tieteestä. Merano esittää, että osa tieteestä on objektiivista ja arvovapaata; osa taas puolueellista ja ideologiselle agendalle perustuvaa tiedettä. Tämä ajatus ei edusta nykyistä tieteenfilosofian valtavirta-ajattelua. Esimerkiksi Helen Longino, Sandra Harding, Philip Kitcher ja Elisabeth A. Lloyd ovat korostaneet, että kaikki tutkimus on pohjimmiltaan arvolatautunutta: se, miten tutkimusaiheet, -menetelmät ja tulkinnat valikoituvat, on seurausta myös yhteiskunnallisista prioriteeteista. Näillä vinoumilla voi olla merkittäviä yhteiskunnallisia seurauksia, sekä hyödyllisiä että haitallisia.

Sosiaalisten arvojen vaikutus ei siten ole välttämättä huono asia tai murenna luottamusta tieteeseen. Päinvastoin! Ajatuksena on, että, että arvojen roolin tai yhteiskunnallisen vaikutuksen tiedostamalla tutkijat voivat tehdä paremmin yhteiskunnallisesti vastuullista ja hyvällä tavalla vaikuttavaa tutkimusta. He voivat löytää aukkopaikkoja, joita emme vielä tunne kunnolla. Joskus nämä asiat voivat paljastaa paljon uutta ja auttaa uudenlaisen ymmärtämyksen kehittämisessä.  Esimerkiksi Caroline Criado-Perezin kirjassa Näkymättömät naiset: Näin tilastot paljastavat miten maailma on suunniteltu miehille kuvataan, miten monilla elämänalueilla informaatio ei ole ollutkaan neutraalia, vaan sellaista, että se on sulkenut naiset ulos. Joskus näiden ilmiöiden ymmärtäminen vaatii uudenlaista kieltä ja käsitteistöä. Se, että tutkimusta tahdotaan Meranon ehdotuksen mukaisesti kaventaa tavalla, joka suosisi vain määrällisiä menetelmiä, tarkoittaisi, että emme saisi monista, monien ihmisten tärkeiksi katsomista asioista lainkaan tietoa.

Tutkimusrahoitus vaikuttaa keskeisesti siihen, miten ja mistä aiheista tieteellistä tutkimusta tuotetaan. Siksi raportin esittämiin vaatimuksiin ei tule suhtautua olankohautuksella. Sillä, kuka tutkimusta rahoittaa, mitä tutkimusta rahoitetaan, voi olla iso rooli siinä, mistä asioista saadaan ja ei saada tietoa. Esimerkiksi Naomi Oreskes kuvaa tuoreessa kirjassaan, kuinka Yhdysvalloissa puolustusteollisuuden tarjoama rahoitus hidasti ja muokkasi syvänmerentutkimuksen edistymistä. Tällä on puolestaan ollut suuri vaikutus siihen, miksi merten roolista ilmastonmuutoksessa tiedetään parhaillaan varsin vähän.

Hyödyllisen tutkimuksen monet kasvot

Suomen Perustan raportti kritisoi humanistisia tieteitä siitä, että ”humanistien tuottamaa tietoa ei monestikaan voi soveltaa käytäntöön”. Kirjoittaja toivoo, että tutkimusrahoitusta kohdennettaisiin vielä vahvemmin ”konkreettisia hyötyjä tuottavaan” STEM-alojen tutkimukseen. Mutta mitä nämä tutkimuksen konkreettiset hyödyt tarkalleen ottaen ovat? Tästä asiasta raportti vaikenee. Tutkimuksella voi kuitenkin olla monia eri hyötyjä, eri ihmisryhmille ja tilanteissa. Kuinka paljon kirjoittaja tarkoittaa taloudellista hyötyä? Kenelle hän tahtoo ja uskaltaa antaa hyödyllisyyden määrittelijän roolin?

Raportti vaikenee myös toisesta tärkeästä kysymyksestä: yhtäältä se esittää, että tarvitsemme tietoa poliittisen päätöksenteon tueksi. Mutta miten tämä tavoite on yhdistettävissä sen toiveen kanssa, että kirjoittajan toiveissa olisi kohdentaa rahoitus ensisijaisesti luonnontieteisiin ja teknisille aloille? Raportti saakin kysymään, millainen näkemys Suomen Perustalla on yhteiskuntatieteellisen tiedon käytöstä poliittisessa päätöksenteossa. Tämän raportin perusteella vaikuttaisi, että ainoa tutkimus, joka saattaa läpäistä seulan, on tutkimus joka esittää itsensä määrällisenä, neutraalina insinööritiedemäisenä luomuksena. Tämäkään ei ole ihan varmaa. Joka tapauksessa tällainen määritelmä sulkee ison osan poliittisen päätöksenteon kannalta merkittävästä yhteiskuntatieteellisestä tutkimuksesta ja tutkimushaaroista pois laskuista.

Hyödyllisyys ja akateeminen vapaus

Suomen Perustan julkaisema raportti esittää, että julkista tutkimusrahoitusta kannattaisi suunnata vielä nykyistäkin vahvemmin teknistieteellisille STEM-aloille (science, technology, engineering, mathematics). Tämä asetelma jättää huomiotta sen, että jo nykyisellään iso osa suomalaisesta tutkimusrahoituksesta on kohdennettu muualle kuin kulttuurin ja yhteiskunnan tutkimukseen. Esimerkiksi Suomen Akatemian kulttuurin ja yhteiskunnan toimikunnan, joka rahoittaa humanistista ja yhteiskunnallista tutkimusta, rahoitus on kaikista pienin kolmesta sen toimikunnasta, minkä lisäksi toimikunnan myöntöprosentit eri tutkimushakkeille ovat olleet myös kaikkein matalimmat. Tämä osoittaa, että julkista tutkimusrahoitusta kohdennetaan jo nyt vahvasti STEM-aloille.

Suomessa on totuttu ajattelemaan, että julkinen tutkimusrahoittaja ei ohjaa liian paljon tutkimuksen suuntaa. Rahoitusjärjestelmämme perustuu tutkijoiden ja muun yhteiskunnan väliseen luottamukseen, tieteellisten asiantuntijoiden kuulemiseen sekä ajatukseen siitä, että tutkijat ja tiedeyhteisöt toimivat parhaaksi katsomallaan tavalla isänmaan ja ihmiskunnan hyväksi, akateemisen vapauden sallimissa puitteissa.

Tällä hetkellä isona huolenaiheena on, että emme voi ottaa akateemista vapautta itsestäänselvyytenä. Iso osa humanistisen ja yhteiskunta-alan tutkijoista on hyvin riippuvaisia erilaisista projektiluontoisista tutkimusrahoituksista ja projektirahoituspätkistä. Siksi Meranon esittämä väite siitä, että ”rahoituksen vähentäminen ei vaikuta tieteen vapauteen mitenkään” on yksiselitteisesti valheellinen. Esimerkiksi Pohjoismaisessa ammattiliittojen yhteisraportissa varoitettiin vasta, että läpi pohjoismaiden akateeminen vapaus on uhattuna siksi, että taloudellisilla intresseillä on entistä suurempi rooli tutkimusrahoituksessa, ja rahoitus on sidottu entistä kiinteämmin hallituksen asettamiin ehtoihin tai kohdennettu tietyille aloille tai tutkimuksen tavoitteisiin. Tämä yhteispohjoismainen raportti varoittaa, että nämä kehitykset uhkaavat erityisesti kriittistä ja uteliaisuuteen perustuvaa tutkimusta. Samanaikaisesti se esittää, että tutkijoiden tulee voida kritisoida myös nykyistä poliittista järjestelmää ilman pelkoa seurauksista, eikä yliopistoja tulisi asettaa enää nykyistä voimakkaammalle poliittiselle kontrollille.

Vähän aikaa sitten uutisoitiin, että Suomi on pudonnut akateemisen vapauden määrää mittaavassa indeksissä 38 sijaa kahdessa vuodessa, ollen nyt sijalla 47. Suomen Perustan raportti ei sisällä ehdotuksia, jolla tätä ongelmaa voitaisiin ratkaista – päinvastoin.

Anita Välikangas työskentelee tutkijana TINTissä. Hänen väitöskirjansa käsittelee tutkimuksen yhteiskunnallista relevanssia ja tutkimuksen kykyä ratkaista aikamme suurimpia ongelmia. Väitöskirjaan voi tutustua täältä. Tekstin toimitus: Jani Raerinne

tint blog post, In English

Field Experiments in Economics: History and Methodology / Tatu Nuotio / Book review

Book Review: Field Experiments in Economics: History and Methodology. Judith Favereau and Michiru Nagatsu. Publisher: Routledge 2025

Field Experiments in Economics: History and Methodology by Judith Favereau and Michiru Nagatsu is a concise book that does two things. First, it provides an overview and analysis of field experimental practices in economics, both from a philosophical and historical perspective. Second, it proposes ways to improve said practices by combining their existing methodologies and importing resources from non-experimental and participatory approaches. The book as a whole is an essential read for those wishing to familiarize themselves with field experiments and their methodological and philosophical questions, while the original proposals invite those already well versed in the subject matter to consider how field experiments could better serve the epistemic goals of researchers and the political goals of stakeholders alike.

After an introduction, the book kicks things off with a general overview of experimental economics. This second chapter is filled with illustrative examples of different traditions and paradigms – from theory-testers to institution-builders and from the lab to the field – and it explores their distinctive characters from a philosophy of science perspective. The chapter is very comprehensive as such, and the numerous references provide an excellent bibliography for those looking for an even more thorough understanding of the topic.

In the third chapter, a distinction is introduced between two strands of field experiments, which much of the book is organized around. The first strand, “lab-in-the-field” experiments (LFEs), originate from traditional laboratory experiments, and they are characterized by attempts to systematically relax the experimenters’ control over some contextual features to make them more faithful to economic behavior as it occurs outside the lab. The second strand, “Randomized Field Experiments” (RFEs), have their origins in the evaluation of large-scale development programs and public policies, and their main goal is to produce evidence about which interventions are successful in alleviating policy-relevant social issues such as poverty.

LFEs and RFEs differ from each other on multiple dimensions, but the most central notion used to characterize their differences is that of control. According to the authors, LFEs are associated with direct control. This refers to the control of the laboratory, where the experimenter chooses the location, writes the instructions to elicit a certain framing of the situation, establishes the incentives, and so on, in order to exclude the influence of disturbing factors. RFEs, in contrast, are characterized by indirect control. As the name suggests, this is obtained most notably by randomizing the subjects into treatment and control groups, so that the observed difference in the outcome variable can be attributed to the intervention.

The fourth chapter ties these two strands and different forms of control to the issue of external validity. This too, it is argued, comes in two forms. The worry of artificiality is associated with direct control exerted in LFEs, where the threat is that the results are confined to the relatively “unnatural” context created by the experimenter. RFEs, on the other hand, have to deal with generalizability. Because RFEs purposefully level the influence of contextual factors in order to identify the effect of the policy under evaluation, it may be difficult to make the further inference that similar effects will be obtained when the policy is implemented in a different context. Both strands thus face different issues of external validity, and in many ways, the history of these strands is the history of trying to address these issues. In LFEs, the purposeful loosening of direct control represents an effort to reintroduce some of the natural contextual variation of the economic phenomena outside the lab. As for RFEs, the authors review different suggested as well as actual steps taken to improve the generalizability of their results, ranging from the use of machine learning algorithms to the theoretical modelling of hypothesized mechanisms.

The last two chapters are devoted to the authors’ own proposals for improving the generalizability and thus policy relevance of field experiments in economics. The first suggestion is to combine RFEs with LFEs to benefit from the high degree of direct control associated with the latter. Because LFEs are able to reproduce theoretically interesting results, such as cooperation in collective action problems or hyperbolic discounting, their experimental setups can serve as portable ways to measure the related constructs, such as levels of trust or present bias. Accordingly, the authors envision that when RFEs first identify a policy-relevant problem, such as underinvestment in preventive health care products, LFEs could then be conducted to investigate the causal mechanisms at play, e.g. present biasness of the individuals, and subsequent RFEs would then test whether a proposed solution based on this knowledge is effective in practice. The authors also argue that field experiments could benefit from utilizing non-experimental and qualitative methods to collect facts about the population, which could guide the design of experiments and interventions to better address heterogeneity and population-specific features. Given the increased awareness of the need to address heterogeneity in applied behavioral science more generally, this suggestion is particularly compelling (see Bryan et al. 2021).

However, the perhaps more radical suggestion is that field experiments in economics should lean more into the subjects themselves as authors of relevant knowledge by incorporating participatory methods. Epistemically, involving the subjects in designing and implementing experiments is useful because they are often in a privileged position to know which resources they need and which obstacles they face trying to access them, as well as why an intervention may have failed to have the intended effect on their behavior. Participatory involvement serves also the political goal of empowering the subjects: when evaluating policies intended to improve people’s lives, those people should have a say in what counts as an improvement to their lives in the first place.

On a more practical level, the authors draw from Sabina Alkire’s (2005) work among others and envision participatory field experiments as a joint effort between the researcher, local field partners, and members of the target population. The design of the experiment would center around public discussion between the participants, facilitated by the field partner and observed by the experimenter, where the relevant needs and obstacles, as well as possible solutions, would be identified. Rather than being someone who asks the questions and answers them too, the researcher would thus be one who listens and uses their methodological expertise to help implement the experiment designed jointly with the participants.

At this point, an objection may come to the mind of many readers, which is that in allowing the subjects and other stakeholders to take part in planning and implementing the experiment, the researcher sacrifices their control over it, compromising the validity of the inferences that can be made. However, the authors elegantly argue that this is not the case, precisely because what is relevant is not control in the agential sense as the exercise of power. For the authors, experimental control is at its core an inferential notion, “an epistemic ideal and achievement”, and direct and indirect control are both ultimately just different ways to make causal inferences sound and secure. The question of how much control the experimenter has is thus different from whether they are able to manipulate the “data-generating processes” at will, or whether they have to isolate the relevant influences through statistical means instead.Even in the most directly controlled experimental setups, the subjects may bring interpretations and framings that differ from what the experimenter intended; at the same time, statistical methods can sometimes yield valid causal inferences even in naturally occurring data with no intervention at all by the researcher.

Overall, Field Experiments in Economics: History and Methodology offers a comprehensive look at field experiments in economics, their methodological differences and historical origins. It is intended for a wide audience, and I agree that many different readers should find it worthwhile. The earlier chapters are admittedly more on the educational side and quite densely packed with various typologies and concepts, but given the book’s short length, this extra attention to detail can hardly be objected. For those already familiar with the topic, however, the forward-looking discussion of the last two chapters should be especially exciting.

At a conference this summer, I asked a behavioral economist if they ever gather qualitative data about subjects’ experiences in lab experiments. Referring to a broader sentiment in the field, the colleague replied half-jokingly that “we economists don’t seem to really trust our subjects”. Now, while prioritizing incentivized behavioral measures can arguably often be justified in a lab setting, I take the present book to make a convincing case that people’s experiences, opinions, and beliefs as expressed by themselves constitute evidence that should not be ignored, at least in field experiments aiming to improve the lives of those people. In fact, I was delighted to note that in two subsequent conferences, many presentations discussed participatory methods from both practical and theoretical perspectives, including one which directly referenced this very book by Judith Favereau and Michiru Nagatsu. In conclusion, it is safe to say that Field Experiments in Economics: History and Methodology not only offers an excellent analysis of the past and present of field experimental practices in economics, but also contributes to their future development.

The book is available in print, and an open access version can be read online through its publisher Routledge.

Tatu Nuotio is a doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki and a member of TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science. His PhD research focuses on theories of social norms and how they are applied in behavior change interventions and behavioral public policy. The project is funded by the Kone Foundation.

References

Alkire, S. (2005). Valuing freedoms: Sen’s capability approach and poverty reduction. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Bryan, C. J., Tipton, E., & Yeager, D. S. (2021). Behavioural science is unlikely to change the world without a heterogeneity revolution. Nature Human Behaviour, 5, 980–989.

tint Event, Perspectives on Science seminar

Perspectives on Science seminar / Helsinki Philosophy Colloquium talk 5.6 with Lorenzo Casini: “Realization Independence and the Epiphenomenalist Revenge”

This Thursday TINT will organize a joint session together with Helsinki Philosophy Colloquium, where Lorenzo Casini (University of Bologna) will give a talk on his joint work with Alexander Gebharter titled “Realization Independence and the Epiphenomenalist Revenge“. The session opens up University of Helsinki spring festival.

The session takes place live in Metsätalo sali 2 and via Zoom from 12:15 to 13:45 on Thursday the 5thof June 2025.

Please note the unusual room and time!

What: ”Realization Independence and the Epiphenomenalist Revenge” by Lorenzo Casini

When: Thursday 05.06.2025 from 12 to 2 pm (EEST, Helsinki time)

Where: Metsätalo (sali 2), and Zoom.

Zoom link: Contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi for the Zoom link.

Abstract:

For the last two decades, James Woodward has been attempting to defend mental causation against ephiphenomenalism by drawing on his interventionist theory of causation. Recently, he has imposed a “realization independence” condition, aiming to address a charge of underdetermination levelled by Michael Baumgartner. If sound, Woodward’s proposal promises to solve an age-old metaphysical debate based on ideal experimental evidence. 

Here, we argue that the proposal runs into a dilemma: Either it contradicts the core tenet of interventionism and leads to absurd consequences or it cannot escape the underdetermination charge. This renders it vulnerable to what we call the epiphenomenalist revenge: the most plausible way out of the dilemma is to give up mental causation altogether. More generally, our argument undermines the claim that the mental causation problem can be solved on evidence-based grounds.

Bio:

Lorenzo Casini is a philosopher of science specializing in causal inference, and working on conceptual and methodological issues in the special sciences, more generally. After obtaining his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Kent in 2013, Casini held positions at Konstanz, LMU Munich, Geneva, the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, and the IMT School for Advanced Studies in Lucca. Currently, he is Assistant Professor in Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of Bologna.

If you have any questions about the seminar, do not hesitate to contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi.

tint Event, Perspectives on Science seminar

2.6. Perspectives on Science Seminar / The ReSES project: Diane Coyle

The next Perspectives on Science seminar will be held together with The ReSES project, and Diane Coyle (University of Cambridge) will give a lecture titled “The Measure of Progress”, based on her book The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters (2025).

The seminar takes place only online via Zoom starting 14:00 on Monday the 2nd of June 2025.

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 webpage https://tint.helsinki.fi.

The ReSES project aims to rethink how economics can better serve society. The project’s Argumenta Distinguished Lectures series provides a platform for leading experts to present ideas that challenge conventional economic thought and promote societal well-being.

Read more about the event, Coyle’s book, and The ReSES project here.

What: “The Measure of Progress” by Diane Coyle

When: Monday 02.06.2025 from 2 to 4 pm (EEST, Helsinki time)

Where: Zoom.

Zoom link: https://helsinki.zoom.us/j/61931407064?pwd=4ItMhJnNP78TSxXRZL7ZoIGPQxI9JQ.1

Abstract:

The ways that statisticians and governments measure the economy were developed in the 1940s, when the urgent economic problems were entirely different from those of today. In her talk, Diane Coyle will argue that the framework underpinning today’s economic statistics is so outdated that it functions as a distorting lens, or even a set of blinkers. When policymakers rely on such an antiquated conceptual tool, how can they measure, understand, and respond with any precision to what is happening in today’s digital economy? Coyle will make the case for a new framework, one that takes into consideration current economic realities.

Coyle will explain why economic statistics matter and argue that to understand the current economy, we need different data collected in a different framework of categories and definitions, and she will offer some suggestions about what this would entail. She will argue that only with a new approach to measurement will we be able to achieve the right kind of growth for the benefit of all.

Bio:

Professor Diane Coyle is the Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. Professor Coyle co-directs the Bennett Institute where she heads research under the themes of progress and productivity. Coyle is also a Director of the Productivity Institute, a Fellow of the Office for National Statistics, and an expert adviser to the National Infrastructure Commission. She has served in public service roles including as Vice Chair of the BBC Trust, member of the Competition Commission, of the Migration Advisory Committee and of the Natural Capital Committee. Coyle was Professor of Economics at the University of Manchester until March 2018 and was awarded a DBE for her contribution to economic policy in the 2023 King’s Birthday Honours. 

If you have any questions about the seminar, do not hesitate to contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi.

tint Event, Perspectives on Science seminar

5.5 Perspectives on Science Seminar: Pekka Syrjänen

In the next Perspectives on Science seminar, Pekka Syrjänen (University of Helsinki) will give a talk on his paper co-authored with Mark Rubin (Durham University) titled “Methodological Pluralism and the Replication Crisis”.

The seminar takes place in person at Metsätalo room 10 and online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on Monday the 5th of May 2025.

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.

What: “Methodological Pluralism and the Replication Crisis” by Pekka Syrjänen

When: Monday 05.05.2025 from 2 to 4 pm (EEST)

Where: Metsätalo (sali 10), and Zoom.

For Zoom link, please contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi.

Abstract:

In the scientific literature, solutions to the replication crisis often involve imposing stricter restrictions on the research process, such as preregistration and adherence to confirmatory research methods. In this article, we argue that reliable results can be produced through a variety of research methods. We support this claim by examining factors that influence the reliability of research findings across multiple levels of scientific inference, including background knowledge and assumptions, theory content and structure, methodology, and data. We argue that the reliability of findings depends on a set of key factors across these levels, rather than adhering to a particular methodological stance. Our analysis thus shows that reliable results can emerge through diverse pathways, including both theory-driven and data-driven methods.

Bio:

Pekka Syrjänen is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. His work focuses on the role of prediction in science. 

And co-author, Mark Rubin bio:

Mark Rubin is a professor of social psychology at Durham University. His research focuses on social identity, stereotyping, and prejudice. He has published metascientific work on issues connected with the replication crisis in science such as preregistration, multiple testing, significance testing, and hypothesising after the results are known (HARKing).

If you have any questions about the seminar, do not hesitate to contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi.

tint blog post, In Finnish

Korkeakoulusektorin tulosperusteinen rahoitus ja ohjaus eivät ole katoamassa / Jani Raerinne

Huolimatta näytön puutteesta tulosperusteisten rahoitusmallien ohjaavasta vaikutuksesta ja kritiikistä koskien sekä mallien taustalla olevaa tiedepolitiikkaa että mallien kehitystyötä kohtaan, vaikuttaa epätodennäköiseltä, että tulosperusteisesta korkeakoulusektorin rahoituksesta oltaisiin luopumassa. Minkälaisia vaihtoehtoja tilanteessa on tutkijoilla, jotka suhtautuvat kriittisesti tulosperusteiseen rahoitukseen ja ohjaukseen?

Continue reading “Korkeakoulusektorin tulosperusteinen rahoitus ja ohjaus eivät ole katoamassa / Jani Raerinne” →
tint Perspectives on Science seminar

7.4. Perspectives on Science Seminar: Jennifer Jhun

In the next Perspectives on Science seminar, Jennifer Jhun (Duke University) will give a talk titled “Revisiting the question of reduction in economics”.

The seminar takes place in person at Metsätalo room 10 and online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on Monday the 7th of April 2025. Please contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi for the Zoom link. The speaker is present through Zoom.

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 webpage https://tint.helsinki.fi. 

What: “Revisiting the question of reduction in economics” by Jennifer Jhun

When: Monday 07.04.2025 from 2 to 4 pm (EEST)

Where: Metsätalo (sali 10), and Zoom

Abstract:

This talk revisits the question of whether macroeconomics reduces to microeconomics, or, alternatively, whether we should think of the former as autonomous from the latter. I argue (1) that the answer to the question is, at best, “sometimes”, and (2) if we take economic practice seriously, we are led to a more interesting question that is distinct from the reductionist question in its usual epistemological or metaphysical formulations.

Bio:

Jennifer Jhun is an Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at Duke University, as well as a Faculty Fellow at the Center for the History of Political Economy. She holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh. Her main research interests lie in the philosophy of science, especially economics, though she occasionally thinks about issues in other areas such as psychology and physics. She currently works on a project that investigates antitrust from a history and philosophy of science perspective. She co-hosts “Smith and Marx walk into a bar: A history of economics podcast” (https://hetpodcast.libsyn.com/) and her academic website can be found at www.jenniferjhun.com. 

tint Event, Perspectives on Science seminar

10.3. Perspectives on Science Seminar: Inkeri Koskinen

In the next Perspectives on Science seminar, Inkeri Koskinen (TINT / University of Helsinki) will give a talk titled “Peer Review in Artistic Research: a Case Study”.

The seminar takes place in person at Metsätalo and online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on Monday the 10th of March 2025. To join the seminar, please contact mirja-leena.zgurskaya@helsinki.fi for the 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

We examine the introduction of academic peer review practices to a field that resists the idea of shared epistemic standards of evaluation and does not have stable epistemic communities. Artistic research, as an academic discipline that gives doctoral degrees and has peer reviewed publications, has emerged over the past few decades largely as a result of broader science policy trends, and the resulting reorganisation of higher education in many countries. In its internal discussions questions about peer review are often treated as a part of the complex set of problems resulting from the institutional pressure to adaptat to academic institutional structures that are not well aligned with artistic practice.

Is epistemically well-functioning peer review possible in artistic research? How to best understand the nature and epistemic functions of the kind of small and transient communities that emerge in different fields of art and in artistic research? We approach these questions from the point of view of social epistemology and recent philosophical discussions about peer review. Our work is based on a case study of The Journal for Artistic Research.

Bio

Inkeri Koskinen is a philosopher of science working as an Academy of Finland Research Fellow in Practical philosophy, University of Helsinki. Her research interests include objectivity, the social epistemology of scientific knowledge, diversity in science, transdisciplinarity, philosophy of the humanities, and demarcation. 

tint Perspectives on Science seminar

10.2. Perspectives on Science seminar: Karoliina Pulkkinen

In the next Perspectives on Science seminar, Karoliina Pulkkinen (TINT / University of Helsinki) will give a talk titled “Legitimacy through outputs: how science and technology can contribute to nondemocratic legitimization”.

The seminar takes place in person at Metsätalo room 10 and online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on Monday the 10th of February 2025. To join the seminar, please contact samuli.reijula@helsinki.fi for the 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:
Many normative accounts of values in science propose that democratic mechanisms such as deliberative polling can help to legitimize values that influence research. However, since a considerable amount of scientific research occurs in nondemocratic countries, we also need explanatory approaches to better understand legitimization strategies in nondemocratic settings. A closer study of Soviet science shows how science and technology can help to legitimize regimes, as evidenced by Kendall Bailes’ (1976,1978) classic case study on Soviet aviation. Building Bailes’ work, this talk offers two explications on the role of science and technology in legitimising regimes. First, the achievements of research can be co-opted into legitimization. Second, researchers may be told or incentivised to contribute to outputs viewed as important for the regime, which can further legitimize political rule. All this points towards how we need to keep output-oriented theories of political legitimacy on board alongside input-oriented ones for a fuller grasp on political legitimacy and science.

Bio:
Karoliina Pulkkinen is a postdoctoral researcher based in the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki. She specializes in the role of values in science and history and philosophy of physical sciences, especially focusing on chemistry. She earned her PhD in 2019 from the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University. Prior to joining Aleksanteri Institute, she was based in KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, working on a collaborative project that involved climate scientists and philosophers. She currently serves as the editor of Chemical Intelligence and one of the co-founders of Jargonium, a blog on history and philosophy of chemistry, which will also transform into a podcast in spring 2025.

tint blog post, In English

Practical Philosophy in Practice: Thinking, Feeling, Imagining and Acting at the End of the World / Michiru Nagatsu

Professor Michiru Nagatsu gave his inaugural lecture on 29 May 2024. This is the script of that fascinating and thought-provoking lecture.

I’d like to use this special occasion to share my recent thoughts on sustainability with you. As you can guess from the title of my lecture, my intention is to give you an example of the questions practical philosophy could grapple with in practice. It is not a standard question I address in my day job as a philosopher of science, but nevertheless I believe that it is an interesting and an important question we may want to investigate more seriously than I can do here today.

Outline

I will start with “the end of the world”: what is it? and what does it do to us? In the second part, I will discuss how researchers in the university could respond to the end of the world. I will suggest that you ‘Slow down!’. Finally, I will conclude the lecture by introducing an alternative conception of sustainability, with an accomp on anying ethical attitude called hope.

The end of the world

So, let’s start with the end of the world. This graph [Figure 1] shows how often the phrase ‘the end of the world’ appeared in a database of English books from 1900 to 2019. The frequency is not that high compared to ‘collapse’, for example, but its usage is increasing as you can see; in 2019, it appeared 4 times more frequently than when I was born, which was 1978.

Figure 1. The relative frequency of the phrase “the end of the world” in English books. (Source: Google books Ngram Reader (English 2019).)

This is a similar graph [Figure 2], but with a database from English fiction books. The frequency is slightly higher, and the trend is generally upward, but not as sharp an increase as in the other graph. One can tell from the two graphs that the non-fiction books increasingly talk about the end of the world, catching up with our fictional imaginations, as it were.

Figure 2. The relative frequency of the phrase “the end of the world” in English fiction books. (Source: Google books Ngram Reader (English Fiction 2019).)

But which end and which world are we talking about when we talk about the end of the world?  According to Lynskey (2024), just published in April, we can distinguish three versions.

We know that the first one is a certainty, based on geoscience and astronomy. In this sense, it is a bit like our own death, which we know is also certain. In fact, if we normalize a bit and convert one billion as a decade, we could say that at the age of 46, the earth is in a kind of mid-life crisis, with which I can fully sympathize as an almost 46-year-old middle-aged person.

The second meaning is also almost certain, and there is little we can do about a comet or volcano, but humans added the Bomb in 1945, just to make it more realistic within anyone’s lifetime.

The third meaning is more nuanced, because here the world refers to our complex industrial-capitalist civilization, the so-called the world as we know it. And we might be most afraid of the end of this world, because we don’t know what comes after. The word “barbarism” captures our fear very well. The alternative term “simplicity” is more ambivalent.

To this tri-part categorization, I would like to add my fourth type. This end refers to the time when a story we used to tell each other loses its grip, or a magical spell. Since the story gives meanings to our collective life, its losing appeal means that a particular form of collective life comes to an end. “What shall we play next?” we might ask, like a small child who got bored of a game.

Narratives of progress

But what is it that has lost its appeal? According to a recent analysis (Danowski and Viveidos de Castro 2017), it is a set of optimistic narratives of humanist progress, which says that we are successfully implementing the project of making human life on earth better and better. In particular, this narrative assumes that scientific and social progress go hand in hand in a specific way: namely, science and society, or science and policy, are linked in such a way that society gives resources, autonomy and time to science; science then lays the golden egg for society, which in turn gives dividends back to science. Repeat.

This idea of progress, and its positive feedback loop between science and society, face many challenges, which are not seen merely as a setback against the backdrop of otherwise steady march toward enlightenment. Rather, the challenges indicate the destructive nature of this very loop. I might be too honest, but overall, I agree with the assessment by these authors that ‘we have no idea what to do about it.’ In response to this crisis of meaning, however, there has been a proliferation of new ideas and concepts in academia, which try to critically reflect on the uniqueness of our time. We are at the crossroads, many suggest, nudging us to take this turn or that turn. But maybe we got lost because we have made too many turns.

The ends as stories

If theoretical turns in academia merely motivate us to come up with even more clever turns, what kind of alternative stories will hold a collective together, namely orienting and motivating us to act differently? Are there any secrets for success of a narrative?

Some critics note that convincing stories themselves need to have a template of beginnings and ends for them to provide a meaning in between. I want to challenge this theory in the last part of my lecture. But before that, let’s have a quick look at a more concrete sustainability debate, just to see that the narrative of beginnings and ends is also at work in an otherwise very technical and empirical debate.

Narratives on growth

In sustainability science, the limits to growth have been one of the central questions for more than 50 years, since the publication of the book with the same title in 1972 (Meadows et al. 1972). In recent years, the debate has been framed as a feasibility of so-called ‘decoupling’, that is, achieving economic growth all the while reducing its net negative environmental impact.

To put simply, there’s green growth believers on the one side, and degrowth believers on the other, who envisions economic degrowth of the North and growth of the South that would eventually lead to a global steady-state economy. I don’t have time to go into the scientific nuances of this debate here. Rather, I just wanted to highlight the fact that the whole debate is closely connected to the question of how to tell a story of beginnings and ends, as much as it is about the scientific data, measurement and modelling. The debate cannot be resolved by evidence alone, because evidence must be interpreted in terms of stories we tell each other.

In other words, depending on which narrative framework you adopt, the same empirical data is interpreted differently [Figure 3]. Should we celebrate the achievements of the industrial capitalism? Or should we lament what it has destroyed and is destroying? Should we be more nuanced and try to see both the rabbit and the duck at the same time? Can we declare that the glass is half-empty AND half-full, suspending any overall evaluation of its content?

Figure 3. “Kaninchen und Ente” (“Rabbit and Duck”) from the 23rd October 1892 issue of Fliegende Blätter. (Source: Wikimedia.org.)

What can researchers do in practice?

You might ask: Is this kind of grand questions something that we as researchers should be concerned about? Aren’t we better off keeping ourselves busy with what we are trained for and good at? For example, we could do some survey on these questions with clever design, perhaps? or a systematic, interdisciplinary literature review with a new method? Maybe we need first to do more rigorous conceptual analysis to dissect ambiguous terms into facts and values, epistemic and non-epistemic, legitimate and illegitimate, and meaningful and meaningless.

I don’t discourage academics from doing all these things, which will surely be interesting. But I’m concerned with something more practical here. To put it simply, I suggest that we situate ourselves in the world, attend to our feelings and those of others, and share our sentiments and concerns, rather than trying to measure, model and manipulate the world from an imaginary, detached position.

Reclaiming-healing

My biggest inspiration in thinking along this line comes from the philosopher Isabelle Stengers, who wrote this great book of agitation (Stengers 2018). Stengers discusses dual un-sustainability of economic development and what she calls “fast science”, both of which are entangled in a complex way.

Importantly, she points out that it is not enough for us to be critically reflexive and transparent about these situations. In game theoretical terms, we as citizens and researchers are like the prisoners of the dilemma, unable to cooperate with each other, despite, or because of, the full knowledge of our predicament. Alternatively, we are unable to cooperate in a more ecologically adaptive way, because we are hyper-cooperative, conforming to the assigned social roles just to keep our complex society running. The crucial first step then is to notice that we don’t feel very well in those roles.

Slowing down…

Unlearning old habits is the next step. In this process, it is important to attend to your embodied feelings. Mild forms of fear such as hesitancy, reluctance, or concern should be expressed and articulated, rather than suppressed.

If we suppress those feelings, we risk becoming more manipulable by others, and more vulnerable to environmental harm. But because we are social animals, we need to exchange and share with others those sentiments and concerns to let them motivate us for joint action which we find more meaningful and adaptive. Academic activism in this sense, is not necessarily about ‘dropping out’ or protesting ‘in the streets’, although these forms of activism is also fun and important. In the words of the epidemiologist Donna Armstrong, everyday activism refers to ‘the simple act of interrupting the daily, normal, social role-playing by speaking “off-script” within our bureaucracies and within all of the societal organizations that comprise our complexity.’ (Armstrong 2014, p. 205). It is a micro-action to challenge the seductive power of the fictive play that no longer serves us.

It is these moments of “off-script” play, and their cumulative and non-linear ramifications, that might be able to transform us, allowing us to reinvent ourselves in new relations with each other and with our environment. We don’t need to blame “the system” as it probably doesn’t motivate us. Instead, we could start cultivating the art of slow science as apprentices now. There is no methodology for slow science. We just have to be experimental and opportunistic, and foster those transformative moments to let new values emerge.

Sustainability

But to what end? Isn’t it all in vain when sustainability is a lost cause, with a diminishing prospect of staying within carbon budgets, 2.0 degrees, or planetary boundaries? What’s the point of the apprenticeship if it won’t help us achieve those goals?

To answer such a voice of despair, I would like to conclude my discussion by advocating an alternative ethical attitude, namely hope. This attitude is inspired by Tim Ingold’s recent work on sustainability (Ingold 2024).

It is an alternative in two ways: first, seen as an ethical theory, it is not based on the standard utilitarian, consequentialist framework for practical reason, which concerns trade-offs, discounts and optimization of known goals and values of well-defined agents; second, seen as a narrative, it does not require a clear beginning and an end. Whenever you start is a beginning, and hope doesn’t presuppose the end, be it the end of history, the world, or of life. It is an ethic with no end in view. And yet, at least it seems to motivate me to care about the world as a researcher and as a person.

Now, this narrative without beginnings and ends reminds me of the famous Confucian metaphor of the Way, or the Path, with no crossroads. Confucius of the Analects did not talk about choice, as the philosopher Herbert Fingarette famously pointed out in his classic (Fingarette 1972/2023). In this view, there is no choice between this path or that at the crossroads, leading you to hell or heaven depending on your decision. For Confucius, there is no choice, really: “either one follows or fails.” (xii). But crucially, you can do it better or worse. It is an art, not a choice.

To me, hope as understood this way is a promising, even coherent, philosophy for sustainability.

No end

I started my lecture with the end of the world, particularly its specific interpretation as a loss of compelling narratives in the face of looming social-ecological disasters. Stengers calls this “cold panic”, a general state of political impotence (2018), and urges us to become reclaiming activists in our own situated way in academia and elsewhere. I have addressed the snigger’s pessimism about the success of such a micro-scale apprenticeship of activism, by introducing an alternative ethic which Ingold calls hope, accompanied by an alternative notion of sustainability, sustainability of everything for everyone for all time. Interestingly, with such hope, I feel motivated to live and research with care for the world. In the end, I don’t seem to need the end of the world as a grand schema to orient myself. I’ll just follow the path, and I’ll try to follow it well. I hope you will follow yours, and that we will meet along the way, and learn from each other.

Thank you for listening.

Michiru Nagatsu is Professor of Philosophy of Social Science and Sustainability at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Nagatsu’s latest projects include The Art of knowing through (un)learning: A Transdisciplinary research study on time, play and dance with children and trees (co-led by Dr Anna Rainio, KONE foundation, 2025-2028) and A tree of knowledge: Practicing slow science in accelerating society (co-led by Dr Anna Rainio, HSSH Catalyst Grant 2024-2025. The lecture was presented on 29.05.2024.

References

Armstrong, Donna L. (2014) Seducing Ourselves: Understanding Public Denial in a Declining Complex Society, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

Danowski, Déborah, and Eduardo Viveiros De Castro. (2017) The Ends of the World. John Wiley & Sons: New York.

Meadows, Donella H., Meadows, D.L., Randers, J., Behrens_III, W.W. (1972) The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind. Universe Books: New York.

Fingarette, Herbert. (2023/1972) Confucius: The Secular as Sacred, The Apocryphile Press: Hannacroix, NY.

Ingold, Tim. (2024). How to imagine a sustainable world. Acta Borealia, 0(0), 1–9.

Lynskey, Dorian (2024). Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World. Pan MacMillan: Basingstoke, UK.

Stengers, Isabelle. (2018) Another Science is Possible: A Manifesto for Slow Science, translated by Stephen Muecke, Polity: London.

tint blog post, In English

Dissecting Arguments for Pluralism: Summary and Comments on Interview with Ha-Joon Chang / Teemu Lari

Economics professor Ha-Joon Chang visited Helsinki in the summer of 2023 to give a lecture in which he presented his new book aimed at the general public, Edible Economics: A Hungry Economist Explains the World. In the book, he uses food-related anecdotes as a bridge to entice readers into exploring economic ideas.

Within economics, Chang is quite a contrarian. While many consider certain uniformity and consensus as scientific achievements and signs of progress in economics, Chang views this development as unfortunate and believes economics has become an unreasonably one-sided discipline. The history of economics includes numerous theoretical approaches or schools of thought that once had a major position within the discipline but have become marginalized or virtually extinct. In his lecture, Chang mentioned Marxist, Schumpeterian, and Austrian economics as examples of such schools. Such advocacy for diversity is called pluralism.

Furthermore, Chang is a maverick when it comes to views on the role of economics in politics. While many economists would like to see economic research carry more weight in policymaking—after all, shouldn’t economic decisions be informed by research and evidence?—Chang rather wants to limit economists’ influence. He wants citizens to understand economics so they won’t blindly accept all claims and policy recommendations made by economists. In his view, democracy requires limiting economists’ authority. 

I interviewed Chang about his views on pluralism and democracy. The full interview has been published in the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics (Chang & Lari 2024). In this blog post, I summarize some of the key points of our discussion. 

Plurality of perspectives

What does Chang mean by pluralism? Pluralism takes different forms depending on what kind of diversity is being advocated. Economics uses many different theoretical and empirical models, and I asked Chang what he thinks about “model pluralism,” which economist Dani Rodrik (2015), for example, has advocated for. Chang emphasized that he believes fundamental theoretical starting points should be diverse. Although mainstream economics today encompasses different approaches—alongside neoclassical economics, there’s behavioral and institutional economics, as well as empirical economics which often isn’t thought to belong to any particular school—Chang believes these directions still share the same foundations with neoclassical economics. Therefore, the diversity remains superficial. 

An essential background to Chang’s pluralism is that he defines economics as the science of the economy, that is, a science whose task is to investigate how goods and services are produced, exchanged, consumed, and also wasted. This might sound obvious, but this view isn’t widely shared among economists. Economics is often defined by referring to certain methodological, theoretical, and/or conceptual starting points. In this view, economics is a discipline centered on scientific modeling of human behavior, utilizing the concept of equilibrium in modeling, and assumptions about the goal-centered nature of human action. Economists can use this perspective to study various phenomena including, but not limited to, economic phenomena. 

When economics isn’t definitionally tied to specific research commitments, this opens up the possibility to study the economy using multiple frameworks. In Chang’s thinking, schools of thought outside mainstream economics are precisely such alternative frameworks.  

Critiques and replies 

However, in our discussion, it remained somewhat unclear to me through what kind of reasoning Chang moves from the possibility of alternative approaches to their necessity. And not just necessity in general, but necessity specifically within economics. It’s undisputable that the economy can be studied through various approaches, but this doesn’t directly imply that economics should study the economy through various approaches. This logical leap is not a peculiarity of Chang’s reasoning; it also appears repeatedly in the broader research literature on pluralism. 

Chang noted that different approaches have their own strengths and weaknesses. One can ask many kinds of questions about the economy, only some of which can be satisfactorily answered using the concepts and methods employed in mainstream economics. We discussed the study of power. There are many types of power, and bargaining power which appears in economic research is just one of them. Chang emphasized that influencing people’s thoughts, values, and opinions is a significant form of exercising power. The starting point familiar from neoclassical theory of taking people’s desires and values (preferences) as given doesn’t provide tools for understanding this type of power. From neoclassical theory’s individualistic foundations, it’s also not easy to examine the concept of social class and class-related questions. 

The fact that different approaches have their strengths and weaknesses means they are value-laden. Different questions matter to different interest groups, so the choice of approach affects which groups the knowledge produced serves. 

I presented Chang with some counter-arguments based on my own research (Lari, 2024a, 2024b; Lari & Mäki, 2024). First, while diversity is beneficial in many ways, uniformity in research also has its advantages. The fact that researchers in a discipline share conceptual, methodological, and theoretical starting points benefits cooperation and discussion between researchers. Common ground reduces misinterpretations and helps in evaluating others’ claims. 

Economists have also opposed excessive diversity with the public image of economics in mind. Differences in the starting points of research easily lead to differences in conclusions. Such disagreements might be interpreted as a sign of the discipline’s weak scientific quality. The impression of scientificity may require some degree of unanimity, and if that impression suffers, influence and research funding might be threatened. This issue has been highlighted by, for example, Jean Tirole, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2014. “If there were no majority opinion, financing research in economics would be hard to justify” (Tirole 2017, 75). 

These arguments received no sympathy. Chang considered both concerns completely unfounded. The concern about smooth communication, in his view, underestimates both students’ and researchers’ intelligence and their ability to adopt new perspectives. As for the public image of economics, there’s no reason to protect it with an artificial façade of consensus. If what Chang calls neoclassical economics is worth funding, the general public will understand that, despite the plurality of perspectives. If it is not, too bad for neoclassical economics. 

In my opinion, both of his responses reveal a striking level of optimism. The challenges of interdisciplinarity have been discussed by researchers as long as interdisciplinarity has existed. Multi-perspectival research hardly becomes any easier just because it is done within a single discipline. It is worth remembering that many economic approaches, which are now considered distinct schools of thought, originally diverged from the mainstream of economics precisely because fundamental differences in perspective led to unresolved disputes. Post-Keynesianism is a good example of this. From the 1950s to the 1970s, economists from prestigious universities (Cambridge and MIT) engaged in the so-called ”capital controversies”, during which the parties faced insurmountable difficulties in making their perspectives comprehensible to each other (see, e.g., Cohen & Harcourt, 2003). As a result, the theoretical approach now known as Post-Keynesianism separated from the mainstream of economics.  

Chang has remarkable confidence in the general public’s ability to evaluate and appreciate research. He seems to believe that plurality and discord within a discipline cannot threaten public trust in science or the authority of scientific knowledge. However, scholars of science studies have repeatedly highlighted scientists’ concerns about how disagreements appear to outsiders, including citizens and other disciplines (e.g., Beatty, 2006; Goodwin, 1998). Strong optimism regarding public trust in pluralistic research is particularly thought-provoking in an era when anonymous social media accounts challenge research projects based solely on headlines and public summaries, singling out for criticism those that fail to align with preconceived folk notions of quality research. 

The question of what kind of pluralism is warranted in economics thus wasn’t resolved in this discussion either. Nevertheless, it’s important that pluralism is discussed and that specifically researchers who know their field well engage in informed discussion about it. Professor Chang’s activisim is commendable in this regard. The self-correcting nature of science is based on critical discussion. That discussion must concern not only research results but also the institutional structures within which research is conducted, including how those structures encourage or suppress non-mainstream ideas.  

Teemu Lari holds a Doctor of Social Sciences degree from the University of Helsinki and is a working group member in the Rethinking the Serviceability of Economics to Society (ReSES) project, which invited Chang to Helsinki. His doctoral dissertation examined pluralism in economics. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Leibniz University Hannover, in the SOCRATES Centre for Advanced Studies. 

This is a slightly modified translation of an earlier post in Finnish. AI tools were used in the translation.

References 

Beatty, J. (2006). Masking Disagreement among Experts. Episteme, 3(1–2), 52–67. https://doi.org/10.3366/epi.2006.3.1-2.52   

Chang, H.-J. (2022). Edible Economics: A Hungry Economist Explains the World. Allen Lane.  

Chang, H.-J., & Lari, T. (2024). Economics, Pluralism and Democracy: An Interview with Ha-Joon Chang. Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics, 17(2). https://doi.org/10.23941/ejpe.v17i2.920    

Cohen, A. J., & Harcourt, G. C. (2003). Retrospectives: Whatever happened to the Cambridge capital theory controversies? Journal of Economic Perspectives, 17(1), 199–214. https://doi.org/10.1257/089533003321165010     

Goodwin, C. D. (1998). The patrons of economics in a time of transformation. In M. S. Morgan & M. Rutherford (Eds.), From Interwar Pluralism to Postwar Neoclassicism (pp. 53–81). Duke University Press.  

Lari, T. (2024a). Diversity for the Common Good? Philosophical Inquiries into Pluralism in Economics [Doctoral dissertation, University of Helsinki]. http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-84-0211-4   

Lari, T. (2024b). What counts as relevant criticism? Longino’s critical contextual empiricism and the feminist criticism of mainstream economics. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 104, 88–97. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2024.02.005   

Lari, T., & Mäki, U. (2024). Costs and Benefits of Diverse Plurality in Economics. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 54(5), 412–441. https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931241255230   

Rodrik, D. (2015). Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science. W. W. Norton.  

Tirole, J. (2017). Economics for the Common Good. Princeton University Press. 

tint Perspectives on Science seminar

13.1. Perspectives on Science seminar: Jaakko Kuorikoski

In the next Perspectives on Science seminar, Jaakko Kuorikoski (TINT / University of Helsinki) will give a talk titled “Structure without foundations? – DSGE, microfoundations, and causality”.

The seminar takes place in person at Metsätalo room 10 and online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on Monday the 13th of January 2025. To join the seminar, please contact samuli.reijula@helsinki.fi for the 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
This paper argues that the standard narrative emphasizing the necessity of microfoundations in justifying assumptions about causal structure in DSGE models is a red herring and that the exclusive focus on the Lucas critique has meant that the more general role of theoretical grounds for causal inference and scenario modeling has been widely misunderstood. In contrast to the standard narrative, the practice of model building and modification within the DGSE program does not exemplify an epistemic strategy of deriving more secure structural assumptions from improved knowledge of individual choice behavior. Instead, the development of DSGE models largely consists in incorporating new and independently justified assumptions about aggregate invariances or meso-level mechanisms under general equilibrium constraints.

Author bio
Jaakko Kuorikoski is a professor of Practical Philosophy at the University of Helsinki and a member of The Centre for Philosophy of the Social Sciences TINT. Before this, Kuorikoski worked as an associate professor in a cross-disciplinary New Social Research program at Tampere University and as a lecturer in Theoretical Philosophy at Helsinki. His main areas of specializations are philosophy of economics and philosophy of the social sciences. His current research interests include new kinds of data and evidence in the social sciences, scientific understanding, philosophy of macroeconomics, and model-based social epistemology of science.

tint blog post, In Finnish

Pluralistin argumentteja ruotimassa: Yhteenvetoa ja kommentteja Ha-Joon Changin haastattelusta / Teemu Lari

Taloustieteen professori Ha-Joon Chang vieraili viime vuonna Helsingissä pitämässä luennon, jossa hän esitteli suurelle yleisölle suunnattua kirjaansa Edible Economics: A Hungry Economist Explains the World (Chang, 2022). Kirjassa hän käyttää ruokaan liittyviä anekdootteja aasinsiltana houkutellakseen lukijat taloustieteellisten ideoiden pariin. 

Taloustieteen piirissä Chang on melkoinen toisinajattelija. Siinä missä monet pitävät tiettyä yhdenmukaisuutta ja konsensusta tieteellisenä saavutuksena ja merkkinä taloustieteen tieteellisestä edistymisestä, Changin mielestä tämä kehitys on valitettavaa ja taloustiede on nykyään kohtuuttoman yksipuolinen tieteenala. Taloustieteen historia tuntee lukuisia teoreettisia lähestymistapoja tai koulukuntia, joilla on aikanaan ollut tieteenalan piirissä merkittävä asema, mutta jotka nykyään ovat lähestulkoon kuolleet sukupuuttoon. Luennollaan Chang mainitsi muun muassa marxilaisen, schumpeterilaisen ja itävaltalaisen taloustieteen esimerkkeinä tällaisista koulukunnista. Tällaista moninaisuuden kannattamista kutsutaan pluralismiksi.  

Lisäksi Chang on vastarannan kiiski, mitä tulee näkemyksiin taloustieteen asemasta politiikassa. Siinä, missä monet taloustieteilijät mielellään näkisivät taloustieteellisellä tutkimuksella olevan nykyistä enemmän painoarvoa politiikanteossa – onhan taloudellisten päätösten hyvä perustua tutkittuun tietoon – Chang pikemminkin haluaa rajata taloustietelijöiden vaikutusvaltaa. Kansalaisten hän haluaa ymmärtävän taloustiedettä siksi, etteivät he purematta nielisi kaikkia väitteitä ja politiikkasuosituksia, joita taloustieteilijät esittävät. Hänen mielestään demokratia vaatii taloustieteilijöiden sananvallan rajoittamista. 

Haastattelin Changia hänen pluralismia ja demokratiaa koskevista näkemyksistään. Englanninkielinen haastattelu on julkaistu kokonaisuudessaan Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics -lehdessä (Chang & Lari, 2024). Tässä blogitekstissä teen yhteenvetoa keskustelusta. 

Moninaisuutta näkökulmiin

Mitä Chang tarkoittaa pluralismilla? Pluralismihan saa erilaisia muotoja sen mukaan, minkälaista moninaisuutta kannatetaan. Taloustieteessä käytetään paljon erilaisia teoreettisia ja empiirisiä malleja, ja kysyinkin Changilta, mitä hän ajattelee sellaisesta ”mallipluralismista”, jonka puolesta esimerkiksi taloustieteilijä Dani Rodrik on puhunut (Rodrik, 2015). Chang painotti, että hänestä perustavien teoreettisten lähtökohtien olisi oltava moninaisia. Vaikka taloustieteen valtavirtaan tänä päivänä mahtuu erilaisia lähestymistapoja – uusklassisen taloustieteen ohella puhutaan esimerkiksi käyttäytymistaloustieteestä ja uudesta institutionaalisesta taloustieteestä sekä empiirisestä taloustieteestä, jonka ei usein ajatella kuuluvan mihinkään tiettyyn koulukuntaan – Changin mielestä nämäkin suuntaukset jakavat samat lähtökohdat uusklassisen taloustieteen kanssa. Siksi moninaisuus jää näennäiseksi. 

Olennainen tausta Changin pluralismille on, että hän määrittelee taloustieteen yksinkertaisesti taloutta tutkivaksi tieteeksi, siis tieteeksi, jonka tehtävä on selvittää, miten tavaroita ja palveluita tuotetaan, vaihdetaan, kulutetaan ja myös tuhlataan. Tämä saattaa kuulostaa ilmeiseltä, mutta tämäkään näkemys ei ole laajasti jaettu taloustieteilijöiden keskuudessa. Taloustiede nimittäin määritellään usein viittaamalla tiettyihin menetelmällisiin, teoreettisiin ja/tai käsitteellisiin lähtökohtiin. Tässä näkökulmassa taloustiede on ala, jonka ytimessä on ihmisten toiminnan tieteellinen mallintaminen, tasapainon käsitteen hyödyntäminen mallintamisessa sekä oletukset inhimillisen toiminnan päämäärätietoisesta luonteesta. Tätä näkökulmaa voi soveltaa talouden tutkimukseen, mutta myös muihin ilmiöihin. 

Kun taloustiedettä ei määritelmällisesti sidota tiettyihin tutkimuksellisiin sitoumuksiin, avautuu mahdollisuus tutkia taloutta useista eri viitekehyksistä käsin. Changin ajattelussa taloustieteen valtavirran ulkopuolelle jäävät koulukunnat ovat juuri tuollaisia vaihtoehtoisia viitekehyksiä.  

Kritiikkejä ja vastauksia

Keskustelussamme jäi kuitenkin jossain määrin avoimeksi, millaisen päättelyketjun kautta hän päätyy vaihtoehtoisten lähestymistapojen mahdollisuudesta niiden välttämättömyyteen. Eikä vain välttämättömyyteen ylipäätään, vaan välttämättömyyteen nimenomaan taloustieteen sisällä. On kiistatonta, että taloutta voi tutkia monenlaisten lähestymistapojen avulla, mutta tästä ei suoraan seuraa, että taloustieteessä pitäisi tutkia taloutta monenlaisten lähestymistapojen avulla. Tämä päättelyloikka esiintyy toistuvasti myös pluralismia koskevassa tutkimuskirjallisuudessa laajemminkin. 

Chang huomautti, että eri lähestymistavoilla on omat vahvuutensa ja heikkoutensa. Taloudesta voi esittää monenlaisia kysymyksiä, joista vain osaan pystytään tyydyttävästi vastaamaan nojaamalla taloustieteen valtavirrassa käytettyihin käsitteisiin ja menetelmiin. Puhuimme vallan tutkimuksesta. Valtaa on monenlaista, ja taloustieteen tutkimuksessa esiintyvä neuvotteluvalta (bargaining power) on vain yksi niistä. Chang painotti, että ihmisten ajatuksiin, arvoihin ja mielipiteisiin vaikuttaminen on merkittävä vallankäytön muoto. Uusklassisesta teoriasta periytyvä lähtökohta ottaa ihmisten halut ja arvostukset (preferenssit) annettuna ei anna eväitä esimerkiksi tuon tyyppisen vallan ymmärtämiselle. Uusklassisen teorian yksilökeskeisistä lähtökohdista ei ole myöskään helppo ottaa tarkasteluun vaikkapa yhteiskuntaluokan käsitettä ja luokkaan kytkeytyviä kysymyksiä. 

Siitä, että eri lähestymistavoilla on vahvuutensa ja heikkoutensa, seuraa, että ne ovat arvosidonnaisia. Erilaiset kysymykset ovat tärkeitä erilaisille intressiryhmille, joten lähestymistavan valinnalla on seurauksia sille, mille intressiryhmille tärkeää tietoa tuotetaan. 

Esitin Changille joitakin vasta-argumentteja omaan tutkimukseeni nojaten (Lari, 2024a, 2024b; Lari & Mäki, 2024). Ensinnäkin, vaikka moninaisuus on monella tapaa hyödyllistä, myös tutkimuksen yhdenmukaisuudella on etunsa. Se, että alan tutkijat jakavat käsitteellisiä, menetelmällisiä ja teoreettisia lähtökohtia, on hyödyksi tutkijoiden väliselle yhteistyölle ja keskustelulle. ”Yhteinen maaperä” vähentää väärintulkintoja ja auttaa muiden esittämien väitteiden arvioinnissa.  

Liiallista moninaisuutta on vastustettu myös taloustieteen julkisuuskuvaa silmällä pitäen. Erilaiset tutkimukselliset lähtökohdat johtavat helposti eroihin johtopäätöksissä. Tuollaiset erimielisyydet taas saatetaan tulkita merkiksi tieteenalan heikosta tieteellisestä laadusta. ”Tieteellisyyden” vaikutelma vaatii jossain määrin yksituumaisuutta, ja jos tuo vaikutelma kärsii, vaikutusvalta ja tutkimusrahoitus saattavat olla uhattuna. Asiaa on pitänyt esillä esimerkiksi taloustieteen Nobel-palkinnon vuonna 2014 voittanut Jean Tirole. ”Jos enemmistöllä ei olisi yhteistä näkemystä, taloustieteellisen tutkimuksen rahoitusta olisi vaikea oikeuttaa” (Tirole, 2017, p. 75).  

Näille argumenteille ei herunut ymmärrystä. Kumpaakin huolta Chang piti täysin perusteettomana. Huoli sujuvasta kommunikaatiosta vähättelee niin opiskelijoiden kuin tutkijoidenkin älykkyyttä ja kykyä omaksua uusia näkökulmia. Mitä taloustieteen julkisuuskuvaan tulee, sitä ei ole syytäkään suojella keinotekoisella yksimielisyyden ulkokuorella. Jos valtavirtainen, Changin uusklassiseksi kutsuma taloustiede on oikeassa ja arvokasta, rahoittajat ja suuri yleisö kyllä ymmärtävät tämän näkökulmien moneudesta huolimatta. Jos ei ole, ikävä juttu uusklassiselle taloustieteelle. 

Omasta mielestäni kumpikin vastaus osoittaa häkellyttävää optimismia. Tieteidenvälisyyden haasteet ovat puhuttaneet tutkijoita niin kauan, kun tieteidenvälisyyttä on ollut. Moninäkökulmaisesta tutkimuksesta tuskin tekee yhtään helpompaa se, että sitä tehdään yksittäisen tieteenalan sisällä. On syytä muistaa, että monet taloustieteen suuntaukset, joita nykyään pidetään erillisinä koulukuntina, ovat aikanaan eriytyneet taloustieteen valtavirrasta nimenomaan siksi, että perustavanlaatuiset näkökulmaerot ovat aiheuttaneet ratkeamattomia kiistoja. Jälkikeynesiläisyys on tästä hyvä esimerkki. Maineikkaiden yliopistojen (Cambridge ja MIT) taloustieteilijät kävivät 1950-luvulta 1970-luvulle niin sanottua pääoman teorian kiistaa, jossa osapuolilla oli ylitsepääsemättömiä vaikeuksia tehdä näkökulmansa ymmärrettäväksi vastaosapuolelle (ks. esim. Cohen & Harcourt, 2003). Lopputuloksena jälkikeynesiläisyydeksi itseään nimittävä teoriasuuntaus eriytyi taloustieteen valtavirrasta. 

Chang on huomattavan luottavainen myös suuren yleisön kykyyn arvioida ja arvostaa tutkimusta. Hän vaikuttaa ajattelevan, että tieteenalan moniäänisyys ja eripuraisuus ei voi olla uhka tieteeseen kohdistuvalle luottamukselle ja tieteen auktoriteetille. Tieteentekijöiden huoli siitä, miltä erimielisyydet näyttävät ulospäin kansalaisten ja muiden tieteenalojen suuntaan, on kuitenkin nostettu tieteentutkimuksessa moneen kertaan esiin todellisena ilmiönä (esim. Beatty, 2006; Goodwin 1998). Optimismi moniääniseen tutkimukseen kohdistuvan luottamuksen suhteen herättää kysymyksiä erityisesti aikana, jolloin anonyymit tilit sosiaalisessa mediassa kyseenalaistavat tutkimushankkeita otsikkojen ja julkisten tiivistelmien perusteella nostaen tikunnokkaan hankkeita, jotka eivät vastaa juuri heidän ennakkokäsitystään siitä, miltä laadukas tutkimus näyttää.  

Kysymystä siitä, millainen pluralismi on perusteltua taloustieteen yhteydessä, ei siis ratkaistu tässäkään keskustelussa. On silti tärkeää, että pluralismista keskustellaan ja että nimenomaan tieteenalansa hyvin tuntevat tutkijat käyvät aiheesta informoitua keskustelua. Professori Changin aktiivisuus tässä kysymyksessä onkin ansiokasta. Tieteen itseäänkorjaavuus perustuu kriittiseen keskusteluun. Sen keskustelun tulee koskea ei vain tutkimustuloksia vaan myös institutionaalisia rakenteita, joiden puitteissa tutkimusta tehdään.

Teemu Lari on valtiotieteiden tohtori Helsingin yliopistosta ja kuuluu Changin Helsinkiin kutsuneen Rethinking the Serviceability of Economics to Society (ReSES) -hankkeen työryhmään. Hänen väitöskirjansa käsitteli pluralismia taloustieteessä.

Tekstin toimittivat: Anita Välikangas ja Lari Hokkanen

Viitteet

Beatty, J. (2006). Masking Disagreement among Experts. Episteme, 3(1–2), 52–67. https://doi.org/10.3366/epi.2006.3.1-2.52  

Chang, H.-J. (2022). Edible Economics: A Hungry Economist Explains the World. Allen Lane. 

Chang, H.-J., & Lari, T. (2024). Economics, Pluralism and Democracy: An Interview with Ha-Joon Chang. Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics, 17(2). https://doi.org/10.23941/ejpe.v17i2.920  

Cohen, A. J., & Harcourt, G. C. (2003). Retrospectives: Whatever happened to the Cambridge capital theory controversies? Journal of Economic Perspectives, 17(1), 199–214. https://doi.org/10.1257/089533003321165010   

Goodwin, C. D. (1998). The patrons of economics in a time of transformation. In M. S. Morgan & M. Rutherford (Eds.), From Interwar Pluralism to Postwar Neoclassicism (pp. 53–81). Duke University Press. 

Lari, T. (2024a). Diversity for the Common Good? Philosophical Inquiries into Pluralism in Economics [Doctoral dissertation, University of Helsinki]. http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-84-0211-4 

Lari, T. (2024b). What counts as relevant criticism? Longino’s critical contextual empiricism and the feminist criticism of mainstream economics. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 104, 88–97. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2024.02.005  

Lari, T., & Mäki, U. (2024). Costs and Benefits of Diverse Plurality in Economics. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 54(5), 412–441. https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931241255230  

Rodrik, D. (2015). Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science. W. W. Norton. 

Tirole, J. (2017). Economics for the Common Good. Princeton University Press. 

tint Perspectives on Science seminar

2.12. Perspectives on Science seminar: Guido Caniglia 

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.

tint Perspectives on Science seminar

5.11. Perspectives on Science seminar: Ahmad Elabbar

In the next Perspectives on Science seminar, Ahmad Elabbar (University of Cambridge) will give a talk titled “Trusting scientific advisors as epistemic curators: from error to attention”.

The seminar takes place in person at Metsätalo and online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on Tuesday the 5th of November 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:

Scientific advice plays a key role in shaping public policy. In light of its influence, and the growing realisation among philosophers of the depth of value-ladenness in science, the literature on epistemic trust in science has recently flourished. Yet, despite its richness, work on epistemic trust in science remains ‘error-centric’: epistemic trust in science is understood in terms of the reliability of inquiry, epistemic risk, and expert disagreement, among other related notions that centre on error. In this talk, I argue for expanding accounts of epistemic trust in science away from error towards attention. Building on an account of scientific advice as ‘epistemic curation’, and a case study of the IPCC’s assessment of the collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet, I argue trusting scientific advisors as epistemic curators requires more than what error-centric accounts presume. In particular, it requires that we look beyond questions of reliability and error-management towards the fair distribution of attention.

Author bio:

Ahmad Elabbar completed a PhD in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge in 2024. His thesis developed a framework of distributive epistemic justice for global climate assessment. He is currently the Adrian Research Fellow in Environmental Humanities at Darwin College, Cambridge, where he will continue working on the distribution of climate science. He is interested in the ethics and politics of science more broadly, and in bringing perspectives from political theory into the social epistemology of science and values-in-science literatures.

tint blog post, In English

Competency assessment tests in the application process for salaried PhD positions do not promote fairness, objectivity, or transparency / Inkeri Koskinen & Päivi Seppälä

The University of Helsinki has started using epistemically opaque competency assessment tests sold by a private recruitment company in the application process for salaried PhD positions. This does not promote fairness, objectivity, or transparency. It also goes against the principles of responsible researcher evaluation.

The University of Helsinki has renewed its application process for salaried PhD positions. This change affects both the PhD students applying for over 100 paid four-year doctoral positions, and the ones applying for 236 three-year positions in the doctoral training pilot. (University of Helsinki, Flamma News 3.10.2024). The renewed process has an element that has raised concerns in the academic community. Each applicant must now complete a series of online competency assessment tests. One test is claimed to assess the personality of the applicant, while others are meant to evaluate verbal and mathematical skills. 

The University of Helsinki purchases these tests from AON, an international company that develops and sells recruitment-related assessment services. The overall goal of the revised application process is to improve efficiency and to “ensure a fair and objective assessment of applicants in large numbers of applicants, as well as to ensure transparency and consistency in recruitment processes” (University of Helsinki, 2024, Flamma News 3.10.2024). We share the concerns of many in our community: the use of these tests does not promote fairness, objectivity, or transparency. 

Psychometric tests in recruitment

Psychometric testing has been a mainstream recruitment trend for decades (Searle & Al-Sharif, 2018). During the 20th century, psychometric testing was developed to meet the needs of educational institutions, the military, and companies recruiting employees. The guiding values in the development of psychometric testing have been objectivity, fairness, and utility (Wijsen et al., 2020).

Given the significance of psychometric testing in modern societies, it is unsurprising that the concepts of objectivity and fairness are cited as motivators for introducing psychometric assessments at the University of Helsinki. However, the doctoral school responsible for the new application process has not clearly defined what is meant by the “objective” and “fair” processes that are supposed to add to the “transparency” of the selection process. Our aim is to clarify these terms based on our previous and ongoing research. Unfortunately, this clarity does not alleviate the concerns raised by University of Helsinki researchers and students. On the contrary, shedding light on these concepts reveals central problems in the use of psychometric testing.

The concepts of objectivity and fairness in psychometric testing

In psychometric testing, “psychometric objectivity” (Seppälä & Małecka, 2024) refers to the aspiration to eliminate personal judgement from the assessment of personality and skills, ensuring that test results do not vary depending on the person conducting the measurement (Wijsen et al., 2020). This form of objectivity aligns with the notion of meritocratic fairness, which holds that the most qualified individuals should receive the greatest rewards (Wijsen et al., 2020) — in this case, the salaried PhD positions. In psychometrics, fairness has often been operationalized as developing methods to ensure that similar individuals are treated similarly (Wijsen et al., 2020). 

However, meritocratic notions of objectivity and fairness have long been criticised for neglecting fairness of outcomes, particularly across demographic groups (Seppälä & Małecka, 2024). Socioeconomic backgrounds shape individuals’ skills and motivation, and these backgrounds are unequally distributed among groups. For example, parental academic background influences young adults’ higher education choices in Finland, although the effect is smaller than the OECD average (OECD, 2024). Therefore, meritocratically fair and objective procedures produce outcomes that sustain inequalities between groups (Au, 2016; Sandel, 2020). In other words, tests that strive for “psychometric objectivity” are inefficient tools if the aim is the fair treatment of demographic groups.

The use of such tests can also heighten discrimination against some groups. When “psychometric objectivity” is sought by using standardised tests with time limits, there is a significant risk of discriminating against many minorities, such as neurodivergent people. For instance, in the United States, the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation has recently appealed to the Federal Trade Commission, claiming that AON’s personnel assessment products discriminate against individuals based on disability, health status, and ethnic background. Regarding the ADEPT-15 test used by the University of Helsinki, the complaint states the following:

Algorithmically driven Adaptive Employee Personality Test (“ADEPT-15”) adversely impacts autistic people, otherwise neurodivergent people, and people with mental health disabilities such as depression and anxiety because it tests for characteristics that are close proxies of their disabilities – characteristics which are likely not necessary for essential job functions for most positions – and their disabilities are likely to significantly impact the scores they receive for those characteristics. (ACLU 2024.)

Competency assessment tests do not promote fairness 

“Fair” methods may be “fairer” to some groups than others (Rios & Cohen, 2023), as they sustain inequalities between social groups, and may heighten discrimination against some groups. This does not sound fair. But how then should we understand fairness? 

Luckily, the University of Helsinki is committed to a relatively clear characterisation of fairness. Fairness in researcher evaluation means, among other things, that “[c]haracteristics or circumstances associated with persons being evaluated or people close to them that are irrelevant to the objective of the evaluation must not be used as evaluation criteria.” (University of Helsinki: Responsible Evaluation of a Researcher.)

The use of a personality test in recruitment requires choosing a set of personality traits that are sought, and others that are not. We have tried to ask how these personality traits have been chosen in the case at hand, and whether AON took part in the choosing process, but so far have not received an answer.

There is an ongoing discussion about whether personality tests – even the best ones – are able to predict job performance (Zell & Lesick 2021). But we are not talking about typical jobs here: we are talking about academia. It is doubtful that there are any personality traits that would be beneficial in all academic fields. Nor does it seem plausible that there would be any personality traits that might not be useful in some academic field. And it is quite likely that there are academic fields where the personality traits of a researcher do not matter at all. Therefore, using a personality test in the application process for salaried PhD positions means using characteristics associated with persons being evaluated that are irrelevant to the objective of the evaluation. By the definition accepted by the University of Helsinki, this is unfair.

But even more worryingly, it is highly questionable whether any personality traits of an individual, or even their competencies, can be reliably recognised by the means of any kind of an online test without combining it with a personal interview with a trained professional such as a psychologist. The Finnish Psychological association (2019) strongly discourages against the use of any test results – either personality test results or competency test results – without such an interview, where the results are discussed and interpreted.

It is therefore reasonable to doubt the ability of AON’s tests to reliably measure what they claim to measure. If the tests are unreliable, they either bias against some applicants in ways unknown and unjustified, or are tantamount to tossing a coin. Neither option promotes fairness.

Competency assessment tests can decrease cognitive diversity

In addition to being unfair, the use of such tests may be epistemically harmful.There is ample evidence of the epistemic benefits of social and cognitive diversity in science (see Rolin, Koskinen, Kuorikoski & Reijula 2023). 

The introduction of psychometric testing threatens diversity among PhD students and university staff. Because such tests sustain inequalities between social groups, their use does not increase social diversity in the academic community. And particularly the introduction of a personality test in the application process may decrease cognitive diversity in the selected group.

A group is cognitively diverse when its members differ, for instance, with respect to their expertise and skills, or problem-solving heuristics. 

As noted above, the use of the ADEPT-15 personality test may discriminate against some groups, notably neurodivergent people. In general, the use of such a test in the application process for salaried PhD positions may mean discriminating against people whose problem solving strategies do not lead to “successful” performance in the alleged personality test. This is worrisome for two reasons: first, it is unfair, and, secondly, it is epistemically harmful.

Competency assessment tests do not promote objectivity

As mentioned above, “psychometric objectivity” refers to the attempt to eliminate personal judgement from the assessment of personality and skills. According to many critics, this just creates an illusion of objectivity, as the assessment methods sustain inequalities between social groups. In other words, they are biased against some groups – which gives reasons to question their objectivity.

Objectivity is a contested concept with multiple meanings. One of us has suggested a way to understand the relations between the different meanings of objectivity in science: When we call something objective, we claim that some important risk or risks of error to which we as human beings are prone has been effectively mitigated, and we can therefore rely on that something. For instance, we may call a research process objective because we have ensured that we can change the researcher in charge of the process, and the results stay the same. In other words, the subjective biases of an individual researcher do not bias the outcome (Koskinen 2020). 

This idea can be applied here, even though we are talking about HR, not science. When people strive for “psychometric objectivity”, the very human risk that is being avoided is that the evaluators might be biased, and their personal judgements could therefore lead to suboptimal decisions. The suggested solution is to replace the evaluators’ judgement with test results. The critics we discussed above (Au, 2016; Wijsen et al., 2020) claim that focusing on individual biases is misleading. It is the inequalities ingrained in our societies and operating on multiple levels that are the really important problem: they lead to suboptimal decisions in recruitment, because some candidates never have a proper chance. Psychometric objectivity is toothless against this problem, as the tests do nothing to alleviate the systematic disadvantages of some demographic groups. 

We agree. The problem is well illustrated by the fact that several companies currently offer training packages and courses promising better performance in AON’s tests. If they really work, then the applicants who have the resources to pay for the training fare better in the tests. In other words, the tests discriminate against the poorer candidates in a very familiar way, sustaining inequalities between social groups. Recruitment decisions based on the test results are therefore bound to be suboptimal.

The use of competency assessment tests can also decrease the objectivity of the selection process.The tests are introduced as a strategy for ensuring that the individual evaluators’ biases do not lead to suboptimal decisions in recruitment: the candidate is not chosen just because the evaluator, for instance, liked their charisma. However, there are many different kinds of risks of error that should be taken into account. In addition to the evaluators individual biases, systematic biases in the tests can lead to suboptimal decisions. It is not a good idea to replace the first type of bias with the latter (Koskinen 2023). If the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation is right, and AON’s tests really do systematically discriminate against individuals based on disability, health status, and ethnic background, then the use of the tests leads to suboptimal decisions with regard to individuals belonging to these groups. As a result, it may become even less likely than before that such individuals are recruited. If so, then the use of the tests has decreased the objectivity of the selection process.

To whom do “objective” and “fair” recruitment methods give power? 

Another important question to ask when introducing psychometric methods is to whom power is transferred and from whom it is taken away (Kalluri, 2020; Seppälä & Małecka, 2024). At the University of Helsinki, the power dynamics are quite clear. The psychometric competency assessments diminish the importance of the scientific merits of the PhD plans in selecting PhD students for salaried positions. This means that the decision-making power is transferred to AON and AON-certified personnel in the university’s HR department. This means that the academic community’s power to choose its new members is reduced. 

There could perhaps be arguments for this shift in power if AON and the HR department could demonstrate 

1) that the personality and skills assessments are grounded in the best theories of personality and organisational psychology, and 

2) that the test results have sufficient predictive power for successfully conducting PhD research in all academic fields.

We have already expressed some doubts about the second point. It seems unlikely that any competence test or personality test could produce results that would be relevant in all academic fields. The University of Helsinki is committed to the national recommendation of researcher evaluation, according to which “evaluation must take into account the diversity of research and outputs” (University of Helsinki: Responsible Evaluation of a Researcher), so this is problematic. Moreover, we have seen no independent evidence of AONs tests’ predictive power in any contexts, let alone academic ones.

As to the first point, AON, of course, claims that high scientific standards have been met. According to AON (2024), “Aon’s solutions strengthen hiring through psychometric assessments that are backed by science.” In other words, the assessments are “[r]eliable, robust, and research-based psychometric assessments.” But are AON’s claims justified, and how can we verify them? 

This takes us to our biggest concern: how can we secure the transparency of a recruitment process if we use tests that are not transparent?

Epistemically opaque competency assessment tests do not promote transparency   

AON’s tests, like all similar tests developed by commercial enterprises, are protected as business secrets. The companies typically claim that the tests are valid, reliable, robust, “research-based”, “backed by science”, and so on, and have marketing materials that support these claims. However, these tests are not independently validated. They do not compare to the kind of genuine psychometric tests that are used in clinical work and that have gone through an academic process of test development and validation. To put it simply, psychometric tests developed by commercial enterprises are not peer-reviewed, and independent replication studies seldom happen – and when they do happen, the results might not be flattering to the firms (Rhea et al. 2022).

Because the tests are protected as business secrets, they are epistemically opaque black boxes both to the applicants who must take the tests and to the employers who use such services – in this case, the University of Helsinki. So it is not possible to assess how they work, and to what degree they are perhaps based on psychological research. Based on AON’s website, it is, for instance, not possible to tell even the psychological theory of personality that the company uses in their personality test – if any. The ADAPT-15 test – which the University of Helsinki now uses – seems to include six “broad work styles” and fifteen “aspects of personality”  (AON, 2022; AON, 2024), so at least it appears that it is not based on Big Five, the best-known and widely accepted psychological model of personality (Zell & Lesick 2021; see also Forsell & Koskinen unpublished manuscript). 

The same problem of epistemic opacity applies to all of AONs tests that the University of Helsinki (Flamma News, 3.10.2024) now uses: we know nothing about the alleged research on which “the scales lst, scales clx, and scales numerical & verbal tests” are based. Because there are no independent studies that would confirm that the tests do what they are claimed to do, and because we have no access to the tests, it is impossible to assess their epistemic value. We have no idea whether they do what AON’s marketing materials claim they do, and there is no independent evidence of their predictive power.

This is against the principle of transparency as it is characterised in the general principles of responsible researcher evaluation, to which the University of Helsinki is committed. Transparency, according to these principles, means that the “objectives, methods, materials and interpretation of the results must be known to everyone” (University of Helsinki: Responsible Evaluation of a Researcher). 

The University of Helsinki should not use epistemically opaque tests in recruitment

The University of Helsinki is committed to the national recommendation of researcher evaluation (University of Helsinki: Responsible Evaluation of a Researcher). The general principles of this recommendation are transparency, integrity, fairness, competence, and diversity. We have just argued that the use of epistemically opaque, not independently validated psychometric competency tests in recruitment goes against the principles of fairness, diversity, and transparency. Competency remains an open question, as due to trade secrecy, we cannot evaluate it.

“Integrity” on this list of principles is specified to mean that “the evaluation must be conducted in accordance with practices recognized by the research community”. Using epistemically opaque “black box” tests that have not been independently validated – using them for any purpose – is against basic practices that are recognised across all academic fields. Members of our community are now being selected in ways that go against some of the most elementary established practices in academia. The University of Helsinki should never use such tests in recruitment.

Inkeri Koskinen is an Academy Research Fellow in Practical Philosophy and the president of the National Committee of Philosophy of Science. In her project Objectivity in Contexts she studies the notion and the normative ideal of objectivity. She is also the PI of the Aaltonen foundation project Pseudoscience in Finnish Work Life.

Päivi Seppälä is a doctoral researcher in the Doctoral Programme in Philosophy, Arts, and Society  at the University of Helsinki. She is a member of the research team of the Aaltonen foundation project Pseudoscience in Finnish Work Life. She is also a STOry-certified professional supervisor and has a 10-year work experience in financial administration and HR. Her PhD research focuses on recruitment technologies, discrimination in recruitment, and pseudotechnologies, and is currently funded by the Kone Foundation.   

References

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