It's Only A Theory

Values in Medicine, Science, and Technology Conference

Keynote Speaker:

• Sharyn Clough (Oregon State)
  • Author of Beyond Epistemology: A Pragmatist Approach to Feminist Science Studies

Science, technology, and medicine have a major impact on our lives. We live with constant technological innovation and scientific discovery, and this changes the conditions that we live in, as well as the way we understand ourselves and the world around us. Science, technology, and medicine are thus entangled with our values, our culture, and our politics, and they have an important impact on policymaking and action. Making value judgments is important to the way that we fund, conduct, evaluate, and apply scientific research.

We invite proposals for papers that engage with these issues from a variety of disciplinary and theoretical approaches, including philosophy of science, technology, & medicine, epistemology, ethics and political philosophy, history, science and technology studies, policy studies, and natural and social sciences.

This year's conference will have three target themes:

1. Gender, sex, and sexuality in science, technology, and medicine
2. Science and values in the work of Paul K. Feyerabend, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Against Method
3. Distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate roles for values in science

We welcome any paper and panel proposals in the broad area of values in medicine, science, and technology, but we will give priority to proposals on these target themes.

Suggested topics for papers and panels include:

• The value of diversity in epistemic communities
• Sexism, heterosexism, or transphobia in technology culture
• Sex and gender in medical research or practice
• Feminist critique of gender differences research
• Feyerbend's relationship to feminist philosophy of science
• Feyerabend on science, values, and democracy
• The indirect/direct role distinction
• The ideal of well-ordered science
• The cognitive status of values and value judgments

We will consider proposals for individual papers, but also thematic panel sessions and more informal formats. Please feel free to contact us early to discuss potential panel formats at [email protected]

For contributed papers, please submit a 250-500 word abstract. For symposia and other multi-participant panels, submit an abstract up to 250 words describing the topic of the panel and descriptions of up to 100 words describing each participant's contribution.

Submit your proposals here.

Please do not submit more than once for each presentation format (so you can submit as part of a group symposium as well as an individual paper, but not two papers). Participants will generally only be able to appear on the program once in any capacity. Papers that are not accepted for presentation will be automatically considered in our open roundtables session.

Deadline is 1st of February 2015.

The Center for Values in Medicine, Science, and Technology works to foster diversity and inclusiveness in our programming, events, and outreach efforts. Proposal authors and panel organizers will be asked to submit an optional 50-100 word diversity statement to explain their commitment and contributions to diversity in their proposal and in general. Conference proposals will be reviewed for quality, but final programming decisions will be made with diversity and inclusiveness in mind. Contributed paper proposals will be anonymously reviewed at all stages, whereas final decisions on organized panel proposals may consider identity of the panelists.

Conference facilities will be wheelchair accessible, and interpreters for the deaf and hard of hearing can be provided upon request. For any questions about the conference, please contact [email protected]

The Center for Values in Medicine, Science, and Technology is an institutional member of the Consortium for Socially Relevant Philosophy of/in Science and/or Engineering (SRPoiSE).

It is rare to hear a prominent mainstream economist discuss so frankly (in public) the ways in which non trivial value judgments enter into welfare economics and public pronouncements of economists:
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/27/when-value-judgments-masquerade-as-science/

I probably shouldn't say, "I told you so," but...I told you so:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1142741
[The published version will be available soon: http://www.amazon.com/Elgar-Companion-Chicago-School-Economics/dp/1840648740]

Moreover, elsewhere I tell the story how even at Chicago-Economics (where they were early and rather trenchant critics of the claims of value-neutrality of welfare economics), the new welfare economics was adopted: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1628102
For philosophers this paper may be entertaining (or a cautionary note) because I show how Kuhn's ideas were both anticipated and then aggressively promoted to create a mythic history (and, thus stiffle dissent) at 'Chicago'.

I'd like to resurrect in a way a thread from February, where Gabriele posted about whether general philosophers of science are becoming an endangered species and Eric worried about the decline of general philosophy of science. I want to register a dissenting opinion; it seems to me that exciting discussions in general phil sci are on the rise, and this is one of the more exciting times to be working in general philosophy of science.

In comments, Mohan Matthen suggested that there may have been a progressive problem-shift in the area. If one defines the discipline by way of a specific set of questions, this may make it look like the discipline is in decline. I see a discipline regaining its prominence by taking on a more fruitful set of questions and projects. One direction is the move towards formal analyses. The move to engage with mainstream M&E is another. Work on mechanisms and models, insofar as it can be said to be general, is another. Here are some other new projects that interest me:

1. History of Philosophy of Science—To me, this is a very exciting development, though perhaps the one least likely to be recognized as a proper part of general philosophy of science. We're now starting to recover the early history of the field, both the various pre-20th century influences and the 20th century movements that led to the shape of the discipline today. The work by folks like Alan Richardson, George Reisch, Thomas Uebel, Don Howard, Heather Douglas, Jordi Cat, Nancy Cartwright, Michael Friedman and others uncovering the original interests and motivations of the members of the Vienna Circle is one of the best examples. This is great for general philosophy not only because it helps us remember why these general projects were important in the first place (no small achievement!), but also because it (a) reminds us of other projects which may have largely been forgotten about and (b) shows us that there are significant differences between the "received view" of what certain projects mean and the original projects themselves.
   
   An example of (a) is Neurath's project of attempting to identify and help bridge "gaps" between different areas of science, which differs significantly from most familiar discussions of "intertheoretic reduction" and "unity of science" by being a more practical aid to scientists and the consumers of science. There is a related example of (b), since this goal was part and parcel of Neurath's conception of the Unity of Science movement, and these histories have uncovered that members of that movement like Neurath, Frank, and Dewey were up to something very different than what Feyerabend, Dupré, and others were attacking.
   
   Turning back to history can often be a source of renewal for philosophy. It can shake our assumptions, offer radically different perspectives, and spur a change of approach. Philosophers of science turning back to the history of the discipline promises to be the beginning of a renewal of the field.
   
   
2. Values in Science—This is not exactly a new area, but it is definitely one that is receiving a new life in recent years. Talk of "cognitive values" has been around for quite a while, but in the 1970's, for suggesting that science was susceptible not only to epistemic and metaphysical analysis, but moral and political critique (among other things), Feyerabend was considered to have gone off the rails. In the 1990's, a small but important cadre of feminist philosophers insisted on important relationships between science and values. In recent years, gladly, there has been an explosion of such work. Recent work examines in detail the complex relations between science, ethics, social values, and public policy. Kitcher's Science, Truth, and Democracy is obviously a landmark work, as much as for who produced it as for its contents (though the contents, blending methods from philosophy of science and political philosophy, provides ). Putnam, Longino, Kourany, Douglas, Howard, and Martin Carrier have also made exciting contributions, and there is an exciting group of scholars coming out of Bielefeld (e.g. Justin Biddle) who are exploring such topics. One of the great discoveries of HOPOS in recent years is that many of the original logical positivists, other members of the Unity of Science movement, and the founders of the journal Philosophy of Science were strongly concerned with issues of science, values, and politics.
   
   
3. Evidence—Beyond talking about how evidence confirms hypotheses in a general way, there has been a lot of interesting work recently on the nature of evidence. John Worrall, Nancy Cartwright, and a group of students at LSE have been doing some fantastic work on evidence for use and so-called "evidence-based policy." Work on topics like experimental evidence and robustness is another interesting case. The work of Allan Franklin, Kent Staley, and Jacob Stegenga are also good examples.
   
   
4. Simulation—Though I haven't figured out my own views on the matter, I've been following the recent work on computer simulations with great interest. Simulations are used across a broad variety of sciences, and they may well differ in interesting way from theories, mathematical models, and experimental measurements. The work of Margaret Morrison, Wendy Parker and Eran Tal comes to mind.

So, while many traditional topics like realism, confirmation, explanation, paradigms, &c. seem to be significantly less popular, many areas seem quite vibrant!

[Thanks Gabriele and everybody for inviting me to join the blog!]