[spsp-members] Tim Lewens (HPS Cambridge), PhilInBioMed Seminar: "Is there a Direct Role for Values in the Heart of Science?"

[Thomas Pradeu]

PhilInBioMed Seminar: Tim Lewens (HPS Cambridge)"Is there a Direct Role for
Values in the Heart of Science?"
Wednesday April 3rd, 2024, 5pm (French time) ImmunoConcept lab, BBS
Building, 3rd floor, Room S3040, Bordeaux, France & Zoom link upon request
Info: https://www.philinbiomed.org/event/tim-lewens-2024/

Tim Lewens <https://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/directory/lewens> is Professor of
Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. He works on the
philosophy of biology, biomedical ethics, and general philosophy of
science. He is the author of several books, the most recent being Why We
Disagree about Human Nature
<https://global.oup.com/academic/product/why-we-disagree-about-human-nature-9780198823650?q=tim%20lewens&lang=en&cc=fr>
 (edited with Beth Hannon, Oxford University Press, 2018).

*Abstract*

Heather Douglas has been an important advocate for the constructive roles
of social, ethical and political values at every stage of the practice of
science. She has offered a careful account of when such values are deployed
in appropriate and inappropriate ways. In particular, she has argued that
if values were accorded a ‘direct’ role within ‘the heart of doing
science—during the characterisation of data, the interpretation of
evidence, and the acceptance of theories’, then this would amount to
‘wishful thinking’ in place of evidence.

Having set up Douglas’s case against a direct role for values in the
‘heart’ of science, this talk moves on to note two claims that might seem
to stand in tension with that case. First, as Elizabeth Anderson has
stressed, building a cogent evaluative case in favour of a claim about what
ought to happen is not a simple matter of saying what one wishes were true;
a good ethical case has a kind of discipline to it. Second, some
theorists—and here I concentrate on work by Anna Alexandrova—have argued
that scientists do and should defend ‘mixed hypotheses’; that is,
hypotheses that implicate both factual and evaluative content. Putting
these two claims together, the prospect of a legitimate direct role for
values comes into view in the internal phases of science. It happens when
the evaluative aspects of mixed hypotheses are given disciplined ethical
support.

If these two claims (about the disciplined nature of evaluative reasoning,
and about the need for mixed hypotheses) are true, then why is it so hard
to find examples where scientists give direct support to their (mixed)
hypotheses by appealing to values? I use cases from research on
conservation science and cognitive evolution to show that hypotheses can be
‘mixed’ in Alexandrova’s sense, and yet the role for values in the case for
those hypotheses remains indirect. This means that there is a route whereby
Douglas’s prohibition on direct appeals to values in the heart of science
can withstand the two claims explored in the middle part of the talk.
However, the talk closes with a suggestion that the key distinctions
between ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ roles for values, and ‘internal’ and
‘external’ phases of science, need to be reconsidered in the light of the
preceding discussions.


*Two examples of Tim Lewens’ recent publications:*

   - Lewens T (2020) Blurring the germline: Genome editing and
   transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. Bioethics 34:7–15.
   https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.12606
   - Lewens T (2019) The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis: what is the
   debate about, and what might success for the extenders look like?
   Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 127:707–721.
   https://doi.org/10.1093/biolinnean/blz064


*Zoom link:*
Please send an email to Thomas Pradeu <thomas.pradeu at u-bordeaux.fr>.

Sincerely,

Thomas Pradeu
CNRS Research Director in Philosophy of Science
Immunology Unit ImmunoConcEpT, UMR5164, CNRS & University of Bordeaux
Presidential Fellow, Chapman University, CA, USA
Team Leader Conceptual Biology and Medicine Team
<https://immunoconcept.cnrs.fr/conceptual-biology-medicine/>
Coordinator of the Philosophy in Biology and Medicine Network
<https://www.philinbiomed.org/> (PhilInBioMed)
Université de Bordeaux
Bâtiment Bordeaux Biologie Santé, 3ème étage
2, rue Docteur Hoffman Martinot
33076 Bordeaux, France
& Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology
<https://www.ihpst.cnrs.fr/en> Pantheon-Sorbonne University 13 rue du
Four, 75006 Paris, France
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