SCIENTIFIC AUTHORITY: an Epistemic Proceduralist Framework for the Legitimate Authority of Science in Environmental Policy

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SCIENTIFIC AUTHORITY: An Epistemic Proceduralist Framework For The Legitimate Authority Of Science In Environmental Policy

MATTHEW EVAN HELLER

B.S., Warren Wilson College 2004

M.A., Lehigh University 2007

M.A., University of Colorado 2010

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment

of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Political Science 2015

This thesis entitled: Scientific Authority: An epistemic proceduralist framework for the legitimate authority of science in environmental policy written by Matthew Evan Heller has been approved for the Department of Political Science

Steve Vanderheiden

Michaele Ferguson

Horst Mewes

Roger Pielke, Jr.

David Mapel

Date

The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we Find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards Of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline.

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Heller, Matthew Evan (Ph.D., Political Science)

SCIENTIFIC AUTHORITY: An Epistemic Proceduralist Framework For The Legitimate

Authority Of Science In Environmental Policy

Dissertation directed by Associate Professor Steve Vanderheiden

The formation and implementation of effective environmental policies by Western liberal democracies are frequently hindered by disagreement over the appropriate role of scientific knowledge. In my dissertation, I argue this obstruction is resolved by recognizing the legitimate authority of science in environmental policy-making. Drawing on David Estlund’s epistemic proceduralist theory of democracy, I demonstrate the compatibility of the authority of scientific knowledge claims about the cause and effect relationships of the biophysical world in environmental policy-making with our normative expectations for the justifications of democratic governance. After defending this approach to understanding the science-policy interface, I demonstrate the feasibility of my theory and its expected impacts through detailed application to the case of climate policy. Specifically, I argue that the authority of science that I defend will increase the effectiveness of policies at achieving desired ends, while avoiding the difficulties presented by the politicization of scientific explanations.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

INTRODUCTION 1

Why Scientific Authority Matters for Achieving Sustainability 4

An Outline of My Argument 10

I. THE DISCURSIVE POWER OF SCIENCE AS A SOURCE OF BIOPHYSICAL EXPLANATION 15

Why Co-Production Confuses the Problem and Fails to Offer a Solution 17

A Clearer Understanding of the Influence of Scientific Knowledge on Individuals 25

Science’s Discursive Role in Democratic Policy-making 31

Conclusion 36

II. NORMATIVE CONSENT AND SCIENTIFIC AUTHORITY 38

Why Deference to Scientific Expertise Will Not Prevent the Politicization of Science 43

Normative Consent and a Duty to Contribute to Sustainability 56

Grounds for Scientific Authority: Normative Consent and Pragmatic Liberalism 69

Scientific Authority within Environmental Policy-making 82

Conclusion 91

III. THE LEGITMACY OF SCIENTIFIC CONSTRAINT ON ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES 94

Science, Environmental Policy, and the Avoidance of Ecological Collapse 96

Scientific Constraint of Environmental Policy Choices and the Avoidance of Ecological Collapse 101

The Inferential Extrapolation of Science’s Correct Influence to Other Cases 106

Conclusion 111

IV. THE REPRESENTATION OF SCIENTIFIC AUTHORITY BY INDIVIDUALS 113

Who Represent Scientific Explanations in Environmental Policy-making? 119

The Requirements for Individuals to Act as Political Representation of Scientific Authority within Policy-making 125

The Institutional Requirements for the Representation of the Authority of Science 132

Representation, Resemblance, and Respect 137

Conclusion 147

V. JUDGING CLAIMS TO REPRESENT THE AUTHORITY OF SCIENCE 149

The Importance of the Aim of Representative Claims and How They Are Judged 152

Judging the Rhetoric of Claims 156

Epistemological Grounds for Judgment 162

Ethical Grounds for Judgment 165

Provisional Judgments of Representative Claims—the Case of Climate Policy 168

The Third National Climate Assessment 169

G77+China Walkout at COP-19 174

A Protester in Manila 177

Conclusion 182

VI. CONCLUSION: THE AVOIDANCE OF THE POLITICIZATION OF SCIENCE 184

The Grounds and Scope of Scientific Authority in Environmental Policy-making 185

Scientific Authority as Remedy for the Politicization of Science 187

BIBLIOGRAPHY 192

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FIGURES

Figure

1. Causal relationships in Producing Scientific Knowledge and Policy Outcomes 20 2. Protester at U.S. Embassy in Manila 178

Introduction

A number of biophysical phenomena currently threaten the continuation of existing human societies. For instance, current natural resource and energy use and waste production exceed levels that can be sustained by the biosphere (Boyden and Dovers 1992). Additionally, anthropogenic changes to the biophysical environment such as climate change, changes to land- use patterns and the deterioration of ecosystem services have caused an increased threat to public health through five mechanisms—exposure to infectious disease, water scarcity, food scarcity, natural disasters, and population displacement (Myers and Patz 2009). More specifically, the emergence of infectious disease has resulted from changes to human interactions with wildlife, such as the increase in overall interaction caused by human population expansion, (Daszak,

Cunningham, and Hyatt 2000). Additionally, global agricultural output is threatened by the desertification of global drylands—primarily caused by the salinization of soil (Dregne and Chou

1992) and the decline in managed and wild pollinators (Meffe 1998). To understand the role of science in policy-making, we must consider how the relationship between human societies and the biophysical world should change in order to respond to these threats and produce societies whose biophysical relationships can be sustained by Earth systems.

How to produce a sustainable society is a complex problem in two ways. First, many interrelated specific problems—such as climate change, water scarcity, net energy decline, etc.— need to be addressed in order to achieve sustainability and they must be resolved in a way that is compatible with sustainable resolutions to the others. Second, these problems are biophysical as well as sociopolitical, which further complicates attempts to address them. For instance, climate 2 change is both a biophysical phenomenon caused by increased greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere and a sociopolitical problem requiring determination of a just distribution of energy resources, among other considerations1. Noting the existence of the biophysical and sociopolitical dimensions of sustainability means drawing attention to one of the most difficult and important tasks for designing a sustainable society—balancing the needs for a biophysically sustainable and a socio-politically desirable solution. Though leaving the resolution of these problems solely to scientific experts is likely to produce biophysically sustainable outcomes, such a solution would hinder the democratic self-rule of the people and the value of directing our collective lives by granting decision-making power to the scientific elite. However, leaving the resolution of these problems solely to the direction of the people is unlikely to lead to biophysical success because the people lack the knowledge of biophysical relationships of cause and effect necessary to identify biophysical problems and possible solutions. Thus, to design a sustainable society, we need to identify a way in which the people retain authority over the direction of their common lives, while also relying upon scientific expertise for explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect. In other words, in order to successfully design a sustainable society we must balance the normative desirability of democratic decision-making with the greater empirical success provided by the biophysical understanding of scientific expertise.

The aim of my argument is to defend a balance between these normative and epistemic demands of environmental policies by arguing for a particular understanding of the authority scientific explanations should have within environmental policy-making. By clarifying the authority that science warrants as a particular type of explanation of biophysical relationships of

1 For a more detailed discussion of climate change and the importance of considering both the biophysical and sociopolitical dimensions of the problem, see Hulme (2009).

3 cause and effect, I contribute to our understanding of the role of scientific explanations within environmental policy-making in three ways. First, my account of the authority of scientific explanations, insofar as it is a theory of the authority warranted by scientific explanations, provides reasons for the exclusion of other sources of biophysical explanations within policy- making. Previous discussions of the political role of biophysical explanations begin by limiting the scope of their inquiries to scientific explanations without offering reasons for why other sources of biophysical explanation are not included (Brown 2009; Pielke Jr 2007). While the exclusion of other biophysical explanations is premised on exactly the authority of science I am arguing for, the act of assuming such authority opens up past theories to serious criticism for failing to justify their starting position—that science is the source of the biophysical explanations that politics should be concerned with. Similarly, my account of authority addresses a second implicit assumption made by past theories of the democratization of science: the idea that, once democratized, all individuals will accept scientific explanations. Though this assumption is not explicitly stated, it is implied by the failure to address the treatment of individuals who do not accept science or, in many cases, even acknowledge existence of these individuals (Brown 2009;

Kitcher 2011; Wynne 1992). It is significant for policy-making to consider these individuals because the authority of science, in order to be part of the legitimate democratic policy-making authority, cannot be so broad as to have power over the beliefs of individuals. The second contribution of my theory is to offer a way in which individuals who accept non-scientific explanations can be included in policy making without including their explanations. This method of inclusion is critical for balancing the normative with the epistemic because it preserves the democratic legitimacy of the policy-making process by ensuring that no members of the polity are excluded from political decisions. The third contribution my theory makes is a practical one:

4 creating a framework for judging whether or not actual scientific knowledge-claims warrant the authority of scientific explanations within environmental policy-making. Importantly, this framework establishes the key criteria necessary to determine who should be treated as a political authority on the basis of scientific knowledge, criteria which do not rely upon the ability of the people to understand or judge the content of specific knowledge-claims. As a result, I provide an answer to the key problem of the role of biophysical expertise within democratic decision- making: how to maintain the role of the people as the ultimate source of political authority while nonetheless recognizing the fact that no one individual has sufficient knowledge to judge every scientific knowledge-claim.

I. Why Scientific Authority Matters for Achieving Sustainability

Unfortunately, the biophysical and sociopolitical characteristics of environmental problems are not easily separated, which requires us to consider how both can be addressed in a manner that will achieve the desired end. Sustainability cannot be achieved solely by explaining biophysical relationships of cause and effect, nor can it be achieved solely through the modification of societies without reference to biophysical explanations. On the biophysical level, the question is what possible human societies could relate with the biophysical world in a way that can be continued into the distant future. On the sociopolitical level, the question is how can we design a sustainable society that offers individuals equal respect in their different understandings of a sustainable society that necessarily follows from pluralist societies.. We see, then, that sustainability requires that the modifications made to sociopolitical institutions produce biophysically sustainable outcomes. Additionally, the complexity of the biophysical and sociopolitical worlds requires openness to revision in our explanations and understandings.

Therefore, we cannot expect one biophysical explanation or one conception of a sustainable society to be exempt from refinement through time.

Past accounts of the democratically acceptable role of science in determining the shape of societies have failed to adequately address the dual demands—biophysical and sociopolitical— for achieving sustainability. Some have conflated the role of biophysical explanation in political decision-making with the political nature of the production of biophysical explanation (Brown

2009; Kitcher 2001, 2011), but these authors fail to distinguish the political influences on knowledge-production from the political uses of that knowledge. More specifically, they treat the use of scientific knowledge within politics as unproblematic once that knowledge has been produced in the right (democratically acceptable) way. Others fail to distinguish between methods for judging the political representation of biophysical explanation and judging the representation of sociopolitical understanding (Pielke Jr 2007; Sarewitz 2004). In other words, biophysical explanations are treated as if they are the same as any other interest—where the biophysical “interest” competes with other sociopolitical interests for influence over decisions about policies.

In the following chapters I address these issues by offering a general argument for the possibility of democratically acceptable scientific knowledge-production and then turn my attention to the use of that knowledge in achieving sustainability through environmental policies.

I choose to focus on the use of scientific explanations within environmental policy-making rather than issues surrounding the ability to produce scientific explanations in a manner that is democratically acceptable because democratizing science is a necessary but not sufficient step for achieving sustainability. To achieve this task, I work from the central premise that scientific knowledge must not only be produced but used in the modification of the relationships between

6 humans and the biophysical world. Therefore, my aim is to theorize how democratically acceptable scientific explanations should be incorporated into decisions about how societies interact with the biophysical world, such as through decisions about the content of environmental policies.

Additionally, I am investigating the question of what process should be used to determine what version of sustainability, or of a sustainable society, should be pursued by a political community. The expected differences among conceptions of sustainability and the requirements of the principle of mutual respect suggest that the actual designs of a society should be left open to contestation and political determination by citizens of that society. I will leave my description of sustainability open as far as is possible. But, in developing an account of the procedure for making environmental policies directed at achieving sustainability, I must address both the biophysical and the sociopolitical elements of sustainability since completely separating the two is not possible. For instance, my suggestion that any account of sustainability should satisfy the principle of mutual respect in order for it to be considered an acceptable political justification restricts the possibilities for how we understand sustainability. Specifically, this requirement excludes dogmatic accounts of sustainability—accounts that do not remain open to critique generated from alternative understandings of the sociopolitical requirements for sustainability or how these affect the use of biophysical explanations, such as Ophuls’s definition of sustainability—a Rousseauian totalizing general will directed by the natural laws of ecology, physics, and psychology (2011). Nevertheless, some analytic division of the biophysical and sociopolitical is possible and necessary for understanding the unique problems and contributions the inclusion of both have for achieving sustainability.

Many different sources of biophysical explanation exist and are available for use in political decisions regarding the pursuit of sustainability. What explanations should be included?

Why those explanations and not others? What role should those explanations have in contributing to the design of sustainable societies? I argue that scientific explanations of the cause and effect relationships of the biophysical world—explanations produced through the use of the scientific method and included as part of that body of knowledge—are the only source of explanation justifiable for inclusion in democratic policy-making directed at achieving sustainability. This is the case because scientific explanations are the only source of biophysical explanation that can be produced in a way that is acceptable to all points of view and be expected to positively contribute to the task of achieving sustainability. Moreover, scientific explanations are not just permissible; they should be treated as a source of discursive authority within environmental policy-making—policy directed at influencing the relationship between the biophysical world and society—because of our duty to contribute to sustainability and the role science has in achieving that end. That scientific explanation is authoritative means that no other source of biophysical explanation should be relied upon to understand relationships of cause and effect within policy-making. Nevertheless, I recognize that the authoritativeness of scientific explanations does not mean that scientific knowledge is infallible. Therefore, I will also argue that contestability within the production of scientific knowledge is a prerequisite for the authority of that knowledge within environmental policy-making.

My concern is with the role of science—as a source of biophysical explanation—within the political process of designing and implementing policies directed at achieving a sustainable society. As I will argue in more detail in Chapter One, this aim is distinguishable from the role of politics within the process of scientific knowledge production.. Nevertheless, many past theories

8 have confused these two concerns—that is the process of producing biophysical knowledge and the process of using that knowledge to produce a sustainable society. Theories that do not distinguish between the process for producing knowledge and the use of that knowledge must assume that the democratic acceptability of one necessarily makes the other also acceptable. In other words, without separating knowledge production from knowledge use and addressing each independently, at least some theories have argued that the use of scientific knowledge in democratic politics is also a necessary component of how that knowledge is produced (Brown

2009; Latour 2004). However, these arguments for explaining why knowledge production and use should be considered simultaneously are unconvincing because they assume that the normative standards for knowledge-production and political decision-making are the same, which I argue is a mistaken understanding of the expectations for the two processes in detail in

Chapter One.

Three issues have been the focus of much of the research addressing the production of scientific knowledge. Some have considered how knowledge should be included in the production of a scientific explanation (Agrawal 1995; Fischer 2000). Here the concern is over what knowledge counts as an acceptable source of explanation of biophysical relationships of cause and effect, and how different biophysical knowledges can and should be integrated. Others have investigated the appropriate role of the subjectivity of knowledge-producers in the resulting knowledge produced, given that biophysical explanation lacking all influence by values is not possible (Bloor 1991; Fuller 2006; Latour 1987; Shapin 2008). In these cases, the primary concern is how the characteristics of the knowledge-producing individuals affect the knowledge that is produced. Finally, still others have focused on the procedures through which both biophysical knowledges and sociopolitical values are included within the process of knowledge-

9 creation, often seeking to defend the democratic acceptability of the resultant knowledge

(Bijker, Bal, and Hendriks 2009; Collins and Evans 2007; Durant 2010, 2011; Jasanoff 2004,

2009; Kitcher 2001, 2011; Turner 2001, 2003). These perspectives will influence my analysis of the role science should play in politics, though they stop short of addressing the specific normative issues of policy-making.

However, I will not offer a detailed argument for the democratization of scientific knowledge-production. Instead, I will be assuming that scientific knowledge is produced in an acceptable manner—and address how that knowledge should be used in policy-making.

Excluding detailed consideration of the requirements for scientific knowledge production requires that I adopt a version of Estlund’s provisional leap principle in developing my account of the legitimate authority of scientific explanation within environmental policy-making, . The principle of provisional leaps states that when a theory benefits from a particular step and there is no strong reason not to accept it, then it is worthwhile to take a leap and investigate the results. If the results are promising, then that step should be returned to and studied more carefully (Estlund

2011, 358). Addressing how scientific explanations should be used in environmental policy- making requires knowledge about the characteristics of those explanations. More specifically, my argument for the legitimate authority of scientific explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect within environmental policy-making presupposes that those explanations were produced in a democratically acceptable way.

I do not suggest that any biophysical explanation or any method for its production will be equally acceptable. The process and product of biophysical explanation will matter for answering the question of whether or not it should be used and how. Specifically, I argue that the explanation must be democratically produced—specifically, produced in a way that satisfies the

10 principle of mutual respect—in order for a biophysical explanation to be justified for inclusion in the political determination of a sustainable society. Further, I argue that scientific methods of knowledge production are the only procedure for creating biophysical explanation that can satisfy this democratic requirement. I leave open the specification of the requirements for a democratized science, beyond the requirement of satisfying the principle of mutual respect, because further specification is not necessary for addressing the authority of these democratically produced explanations. Recognizing that scientific explanation should be authoritative in the creation of environmental policies directed at achieving a sustainable societies does not clarify the specific role science has in policy-making—particularly the range and limits to the authority of scientific commands.

II. An Outline of My Argument

I conclude here by offering a brief overview of my argument for the authoritative role of scientific explanation of cause and effect relationships of the biophysical world in environmental policy-making. I develop this argument in four parts. In Chapter One I present a framework for understanding the role of biophysical explanation, and particularly scientific explanation, within environmental policy-making. This framework is necessary in order to give consideration to the appropriate role of scientific explanations of cause and effect relationships distinguished from the many other biophysical explanations particular persons may include in their political acts.

This framework is developed by first elaborating on the distinction between the influence of politics on scientific knowledge-production and the influence of scientific knowledge on political decision-making. Particular attention is given to Wynne’s analysis of Cumbrian sheep farmers as a clear example of the problems for understanding the role science should have in politics that this confusion has caused (1992). Second, I draw on Dryzek’s theory of democracy (2000, 2012)

11 to argue that when specifically investigating the political influences of scientific knowledge that knowledge should be understood as possessing discursive power. Focusing on the discursive nature of scientific explanation draws attention to the formative role science has in individuals’ experience of biophysical phenomena without overlooking the importance of sociopolitical values for their understands of those experiences. Third, I argue for why science’s influence on environmental policy-making presents a potential problem of political power requiring justification, and suggest that this understanding of the problem necessitates turning from

Dryzek’s concern with the authenticity of a global democracy to theories of democratic authority2.

Having developed a framework that allows for the investigation of the particular role of scientific explanation within environmental policy-making, in Chapters Two and Three I argue for how the specific power of scientific knowledge should be understood as an instance of democratically legitimate authority. In Chapter Two, I argue that science should be the source of political authority over the biophysical explanation in environmental policy-making. First, I argue that the epistemic authority of science, based on its reliability, cannot justify an acceptable role for science within policy-making because relying upon the epistemic authority of science will not prevent the politicization of scientific explanations. More specifically, scientific explanations are politicized when the explanatory authority of science is used to justify prescriptive claims. Second, I argue that individuals can have political authority in their use of scientific explanation within environmental policy-making because of the role these explanations

2 Of course, it must be acknowledged that science does not directly act in the world, which is why in chapter 4 I move from this abstraction –science as a discursive influence on the form of environmental policies—to considerations of how individuals represent science.

12 have in discharging our humanitarian duties, particularly the duty to contribute to achieving sustainability. This authority results from the wrongness of failing to contributing to achieving sustainability and the requirement of democratically acceptable biophysical explanation within environmental policy in order to make that contribution. Third, I use the case of the Ecological

Society of America’s report on invasive species (Lodge et al. 2006) to demonstrate how the authority argued for here applies to an actual case of scientific explanation intended for use in environmental policy-making.

In Chapter Three, I argue for the legitimacy of the influence of scientific explanation on environmental policy. First, I argue that the legitimacy of science’s influence in environmental policy-making results from the better job science does than other biophysical explanations in avoiding agreed upon bad outcomes—specifically ecological collapse. Second, I argue that the legitimacy of science’s influence on environmental policies that contribute to achieving sustainability, beyond merely those that avoid ecological collapse, can be justified by the expected correctness of science’s influence in these sustainability contributing cases by extrapolate from the correctness of science’s influence in cases of environmental policies that avoid ecological collapse. I conclude this chapter by drawing attention to the fact that a complete understanding of how the correctness of science’s influence in ecological collapse-avoiding cases can be extrapolated to sustainability achieving cases requires consideration of how individuals represent scientific explanations within their political claims.

In Chapter Four, I turn from the focus of earlier chapters on scientific explanations of the cause and effect relationships of the biophysical world to considerations of individuals in the policy process as scientific knowledge-claimers. I begin by rejecting the possibility of isolating biophysical representations from sociopolitical ones and accordingly reject the possibility for an

13 individual to act as a representative of only scientific explanation within policy-making. Second,

I argue for how my conception of representation of science by any individual can satisfy the demands of representative democracy. Drawing on the framework developed by Brown (2009), I demonstrate scientific knowledge-claims can be the source of legitimate authority by arguing that individual scientific knowledge-claimers can satisfy both the formal and substantive elements of democratic representation. To make that argument, I draw from the theories of political representation developed by Mansbridge (2003, 2011) and Rehfeld (2009). Third, I address a likely critique of my argument that anyone may represent the authority of science— that many individuals will unwarrantedly claim to represent scientific authority. I argue that the validity of particular representative claims should be judged by the characteristics of the claim- maker. More specifically, I draw on O’Neill (2006) to argue that the rhetorical presentation of a scientific knowledge-claim provides grounds for judging that claim that are independent of its scientific content. Additionally, I suggest that the end intended for the claim, either to justify or criticize a policy, influences the way a claim should be judged. I conclude the chapter by drawing on Saward (2010) to demonstrate the ability of representatives of scientific authority to satisfy the demands of the principle of mutual respect required of democracies.

Finally, in Chapter Five, I apply my theory of the authority of scientific explanation within environmental policy-making to the case of climate policy-making. My focus is on elucidating the consideration that would be required for individuals to judge the acceptability of particular claims to represent the incomplete discourse of science. Importantly, I do not argue for or against particular policy possibilities because such an argument would require normative judgments that are beyond the scope of science’s authority as provider of biophysical explanations of cause and effect relationships within environmental policy-making. Rather, I

14 present accounts of the various ways that scientific explanation of biophysical relationships of cause and effect could be represented and how the criteria for judging those claims influence the authority that each would have.

Chapter 1

The Discursive Power of Science as a Source of Biophysical Explanation

As I suggested in the Introduction, the politicization of science results from the conflation of the descriptive power of biophysical explanations with the prescriptive power of sociopolitical values. Before it is possible to address how these two powers should relate with each other in environmental policy-making, a clearer understanding of the characteristics of the power of biophysical explanations is needed—my focus in this chapter. Among the possible sources of biophysical explanation, I will focus on scientific explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect because, as will be argued in Chapters Two and Three, science provides the only explanations that can be included as a democratically legitimate source of biophysical explanation. As will be discussed in more detail in those chapters, focusing on the requirements for democratically legitimate authority rather than empirical reliability provides the standard for understanding the appropriate influence of science’s power in policy-making because empirical reliability cannot justify scientific authority in a manner compatible with democratic policy- making. Generally, there are two political concerns with the role of science in environmental policy-making that must be dealt with. First, in order for environmental policy-making to be done democratically, it must be the case that scientists cannot be solely authorized for these political decisions3 because that would result in a technocratic rather than democratic decision- making. Second, the discursive power of scientific explanations cannot be used to justify policy positions, either independently or as a supplement to the power of sociopolitical values to

3 I assume this preference for democratic politics, but for an argument for why we should have this preference see Estlund (2008).

16 evaluate and prescribe, because scientific explanations of the biophysical world cannot answer moral or sociopolitical questions. In short, similarly to technocracy, scientific determinism—the belief that a correct biophysical explanation of a situation will demonstrate what should be done—must also be avoided because explanations of biophysical relationships cannot address questions of values. I will be addressing both issues in later chapters; here it is important only to note the limits within which an acceptable defense of the inclusion of scientific explanations within policy-making could be made. In other words, for scientific explanations to be included within environmental policy-making as the authoritative source of explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect, it must be the case that science’s influence not be restricted to only scientific experts and that influence not extend to decisions over policy outcomes.

But how is this appropriate influence identified? And why is science the authoritative source of this influence? As I have already suggested in the Introduction, the democratic production of scientific knowledge must be treated independently from investigations into the role of that knowledge in politics. In this chapter, I explain how that separation can be made analytically and explain why it is required in order to offer prescriptions for how scientific explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect should influence policy-making. I begin, in Section I, by critiquing the co-productionist position that scientific knowledge and social order are constitutive of each other and that the processes through which they are constructed are a single entangled phenomenon—and argue that separating the processes of scientific knowledge-production from the construction of social order is required in order to offer a prescription on how either should be produced. Importantly, my focus is on criticizing the normativity of the co-productionist position, not its empirical accuracy. In other words, I do not question whether or not most people experience the construction of order in the natural and

17 social worlds simultaneously. Rather, I criticize the ability of co-productionism to prescribe remedies for problems identified in either the natural or social ordering. Having defended a focus on the role of science in politics, I argue in Section II that a further separation is necessary in order to clarify the specific role of science within policy-making: we need to distinguish between the discursive power of biophysical explanation from the discursive power of sociopolitical values. Then in Section III, I explain why past accounts of discursive democracy, particularly

Dryzek’s democratic theory (1990, 2000), fail to clarify an acceptable role for science. I go on in that section to argue for what is required of a theory in order for it to provide such an account. In arguing for an analytic division between the influence of science on politics from politics on science, I am not arguing against the need to democratize scientific knowledge-production. In fact, I am explicitly supporting that project. But, it is not the only concern we should have with scientific knowledge. Therefore, I am turning to a different concern, assuming that these others have been and will continue to be addressed by other scholars.

I. Why Co-production confuses the problem and fails to offer a solution

To identify the unique power of science in politics, I must first distinguish the role of science in politics from the role of politics in science. There are clear differences between the way in which politics influence the production of scientific knowledge and the manner through which science influences political processes. For instance, the outcomes of political decisions—such as over the allocation of government research funds—can provide scientists with reasons to investigate some biophysical phenomenon rather than others; on the other hand, science provides policy-makers with biophysical explanations that are used in decisions over the policy mechanisms chosen for achieving some end. Unfortunately, appreciation of the importance of this distinction for prescribing roles for politics in scientific knowledge-production or for

18 scientific knowledge in policy-making has largely been lacking from co-productionist treatments of the relationship between science and politics (Brown 2009; Jasanoff 1990; Latour 2004;

Wynne 1992).

Co-production recognizes that the processes for producing explanations of biophysical phenomena and social phenomena are entangled with each other (Jasanoff 2004, 2). It is these explanations of the biophysical and sociopolitical and the ways in which these explanations organize human lives that co-productions are referring to when they speak of the production of natural order and social/political order. By drawing attention to this entanglement, the co- productionist idiom is able to illuminate particular power relations produced through the mutually embedded relationship of science and politics (Irwin 2008, 59). More specifically related to our interest with environmental policy-making, co-productionism draws attention to how “scientific and political order are simultaneously created and recreated so as to sustain each other through complex rituals of interdependence” (Jasanoff et al. 1995, 527). This is to say, co- productionist accounts of science and politics do not presuppose unidirectional causal arrows running from science to politics or vice-versa (Jasanoff 2004, 30). Rather, the two unidirectional causal arrows of science into politics and politics into science are replaced by two “strands of a single, tightly woven cultural enterprise through which human beings seek to make sense of their condition” (Jasanoff 2004, 21). This shift in our understanding of the causal influences of science on politics and politics on science provides the ability to describe, explain, critique and predict empirical phenomena related to the natural order of science and the social order that politics is a part of (Jasanoff 2004, 47).

It is important to note that the key interest of co-productionist accounts is on empirical phenomena. This focus on empirical phenomena limits the ability of co-production accounts to

19 merely “revealing unsuspected dimensions of ethics, values, lawfulness and power within the epistemic, material, and social formations that constitute science and technology” (Jasanoff

2004, 4). What is lacking here is the ability to prescribe action or reforms to the current state of affairs. Advocates for co-production may argue that the lack of prescription results from their explicit opposition to “univocal grand narratives” (Jasanoff 2004, 37). But, even accepting the normative desirability of multivocal interpretations of science and politics—interpretations that draw from multiple perspectives and leave open the possibility for disagreement and the presentation of different interpretations by others—the more important explanation for the lack of prescription by co-productionists is their inaccurate understanding of the causal processes of co-production. In part, this inability results from the messiness of real-world experiences in which individuals do not clearly separate their biophysical explanations from their sociopolitical values, and, as a result, create a sense of entanglement in the production of science and politics4.

In short, we can’t experience either the social world or the biophysical world without simultaneously being influenced by the other. For instance, Keller (1996) argues that the conception of individual organisms and genes used in evolutionary biology—“the ‘Hobbesian man’: simultaneously autonomous and oppositional, connected to the world in which it finds itself not by the promise of life and growth but primarily by the threat of death and loss, its first and foremost need being the defence of its boundaries” (156)—is not necessitated by nature, but is rather a result of the social and psychosocial history within which evolutionary theory developed. In this example Keller demonstrates how a sociopolitical order that values Hobbesian human individuals produces a natural order in which Hobbesian individuals also exist.

Nevertheless, if we are seeking to not only understand how the production of biophysical

4 In the next section, I will specifically address the aggregation of biophysical explanation and sociopolitical values within individuals—arguing that we can and should analytically distinguish the two in theorizing about the appropriate role of each in environmental policy-making.

20 explanations—or what co-productionists refer to as natural order—and sociopolitical order are experienced, but also how the two should influence each other’s production, we must decouple the strands and investigate each independently. Of course, the production of sociopolitical order is not the same as the production of environmental policy outcomes, which are the focus here.

But, the two are closely related, insofar as environmental policy outcomes contribute to sustaining the political order within which they are produced those policy outcomes should be understood as part of the sociopolitical ordering which co-productionists are concerned with.

A. Science ↔ Policy Outcomes B. Science  Policy Outcomes Figure 1. Causal relationships in Producing Scientific Knowledge and Policy Outcomes

Unfortunately, co-productionism hinders this decoupling when it relies upon a bidirectional arrow of production, such as is represented in line A of fig.1.When the causal relationships of scientific knowledge and social order cohere in the manner of line A, both science and politics are changeable simultaneously—science is produced by politics while political order is produced by science. The unfortunate consequence of this simultaneous production is that neither scientific knowledge nor political order provides a firm ground from which to prescribe. In other words, in acting on problems in the production of scientific knowledge (such as in the determination of who is considered a peer capable of participating in the review of the knowledge-claims research publications) that knowledge changes and also changes the way in which political order is produced5. But, by changing the political order produced, the scientific knowledge whose production process was just modified is also changed—thus resulting in an endless cycle of modifications to the production of scientific

5 I return to the issue of peer review and the determination of “peers” later in this section, when presenting Wynne’s analysis of Cumbrian sheep farmers (1992) as an example of the limits of co-productionists to prescribe.

knowledge and political order. Moreover, the differences in the process of producing scientific knowledge and political order and the different ends which each is used to achieve suggests that scientific knowledge-making and social order-making should not be considered the same process as is suggested by the bidirectional arrow of line A.

Line B of fig.1 may seem compatible with a co-productionist understanding of the relationship of science and politics, but it is rejected because of the “black boxing” or presumed stability of the tail end of each arrow (Jasanoff et al. 1995, 527). However, provisionally accepting that “black box” gives us ground to stand on— it holds part of our experience stable so that we can evaluate other parts. This is to say, by making a theoretical division between the two arrows, I am providing the ability to analyze each direction of the arrow independently, which allows us to imagine, analyze, and discuss the ways modifications to one side will affect the other without requiring immediate reconsideration of our starting point.

If I am correct to decouple the practices of scientific knowledge-production and sociopolitical ordering, the prescriptions offered for how either should be modified should also be expected to differ. The co-productionist acceptance of a bidirectional causal arrow allows for the critique of current states of affairs based on the demonstrated conditionality of natural and social orders. In other words, by demonstrating that neither the natural or social order under which we live are necessitated by nature or natural, co-productionism provide means to critique current states of affairs, but it fails to provide the depth of understanding of these productive processes necessary to prescribe reforms. Therefore, when arguing for the right role of scientific explanation in environmental policy-making, as I am doing here, the focus of the investigation should not be on the simultaneous occurrence of the two phenomena. More specifically, what

22 role should scientific biophysical explanation have in the creation of environmental policy- making?

My argument for the need to decouple the production of science from politics because of the inability to prescribe uniform and simultaneous reforms to both directions of the complex processes that produce scientific knowledge and political order may be clarified by turning to

Wynne’s oft discussed study of Cumbrian sheep farmers (1992). Wynne argues that the failure of those farmers to accept or trust scientific knowledge addressing the Chernobyl fallout is explained by “a rich supply of evidence to support a model of [a] the subordination of science to untrustworthy institutional and political interests, and of [b] a deep flaw in the very nature of science” (1992, 294). In the analysis Wynne is offering of the Cumbrian situation—where

Cumbrian sheep farmers failed to accept scientific explanations of the biophysical effects of the

Chernobyl fallout or scientific explanations for how to avoid radioactively contaminated meat, there are two distinct sources for the problem of a lack of public trust in science. Source [a] focuses on the use of science in the policy-making process. Source [b], on the other hand, draws attention to the deficiencies in the production of scientific knowledge.

Unfortunately only one solution is proposed for both of these problems, specifically science’s need for a “reflexive recognition of its own conditionality” (Wynne 1992, 297). In other words, the Cumbrian farmers would have accepted scientific explanations of the effects of the Chernobyl fallout if those producing and using those scientific explanations recognized that

“the scientific perspective was just as socially grounded, conditional and value-laden as the other

[perspective]” and, in light of this recognition, had appropriately modified the institutions for scientific knowledge-production and use—including, for instance, expanding the individuals that are included in the peer group that may legitimately criticize scientific bodies of knowledge

23 beyond the borders of the specialist group to include non-specialists that have relevant knowledge (in this case, the Cumbrian sheep farmers) (Wynne 1992, 297). While it’s unfortunate that Wynne only offers one solution for resolving [a] and [b], his greater awareness of the conditionality of scientific knowledge is nonetheless valuable for addressing problem [b], at least insofar as reflexive self-awareness may offer insight into that “deep flaw” in the nature of science—its failure to recognize the legitimacy of criticism of its knowledge offered by those outside of the immediate specialist peer-group (1992, 297).

The fact that Wynne leaves open how greater self-awareness of the conditionality of scientific knowledge production would address science’s subordination within the policy-process to other untrustworthy institutional and political interests suggests that a greater reflexivity in scientific knowledge-production cannot address the untrustworthiness of political institutions.

Consideration of the conditionality, or context dependence, of knowledge-production does not speak to how that knowledge should be used once it has been produced. In other words, prescribing greater reflection on the process of scientific knowledge-production does not directly offer any remedy for the political issue of untrustworthiness of political institutions and interests, despite Wynne’s expectation otherwise (1992, 300). The difference between the problems identified by Wynne and their requirement for different solutions becomes apparent when the distinction between the role of science in politics and politics in science is kept in mind.

Specifically, Wynne [a] identifies the problematic nature of science’s role in making policies about the movement and slaughter of sheep following the Chernobyl accident, whereas [b] draws attention to the influence of politics on the production of scientific-knowledge. In other words, in

[a] science influences politics and in [b] politics influence science. More generally, it is not clear why an argument for how politics should influence scientific knowledge production, as it

24 unavoidably must as a result of the influence of the cultural context and sociopolitical values of individuals on the knowledge they produce, would directly speak to how science should influence politics.

If the above analysis is correct, then it follows that prescribing an acceptable role for scientific explanations within environmental policy-making, rather than merely analyzing and critiquing its current role, requires that the influence of science on politics be separated from the influence of politics on the production of scientific knowledge. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the decoupling I am arguing for here is an analytic distinction for investigating the normatively appropriate role for science. I am not speaking to the empirical phenomena of how science and politics influence each other. This analytic distinction is necessary if we are to understand how each of the processes of co-production should function. Once the ideal role for science within environmental policy-making is understood, we can return to the practices of actual people, which are much less clear, with the theoretical tools necessary to make prescriptions about how scientific authority should act in the production of science and political order—or at least environmental policy-making. And, as we will see in later chapters, the two arrows of production again collapse, once I move my theory from the abstract authority of science and to an argument for how individuals can actually represent that authority in real-world policy-making. Thus, my complete argument for the authority of science within environmental policy-making, which includes both a defense of that authority and an argument for how it can be represented in actual policy-making, should be understood as sympathetic to the argument of co-production because, in the critical act of first decoupling and then collapsing the two causal arrows, I find that science is, to a small but important degree, produced in the policy process alongside environmental policies. Nonetheless, though I am sympathetic to co-productionist

25 accounts of the entangled experience of natural order and social order production, my argument should still not be considered entirely co-productionist because of the analytic distinction I am making between the processes of natural order production and of social order production. In other words, I accept that environmental policy-making influences the production of scientific explanations, but scientific knowledge-production is not my focus here because policy-making remains first and foremost a process for producing political order not biophysical explanation of relationships of cause and effect.

II. A Clearer Understanding of the Influence of Scientific Knowledge on Individuals

In the previous section, I argued that the processes through which science influences politics must be separated from the processes through which politics and our sociopolitical values influence scientific knowledge production if we expect to make normative prescriptions about the appropriate role of science in politics. However, individuals, in their beliefs and actions, do not clearly distinguish between their biophysical explanations and sociopolitical values. In other words, what we know about the world and what that knowledge means for how we live are not easily separated—this is in part why the empirical phenomena of biophysical explanation and sociopolitical order are experienced as co-produced (Jasanoff 2004). Therefore, if making the separation between science and politics is necessary to allow for prescription but the two cannot be clearly separated in the belief and actions of individuals, then we must also separate the power of science from the power of people, individually or collectively. One way in which to accomplish this separation, as I argue in this section, is to understand science as the descriptive component of some discourses—that is, the part of a discourse that provides explanations of the biophysical relationships of cause and effect but importantly does not include prescriptive elements. Similar to the separation argued for in the previous section, abstracting

26 from actual individuals, as is argued in this section, is an analytical tool rather than a claim to how we actually experience the biophysical world. From inside of our own discourse our worldview appears as one whole rather than composed of two parts—a descriptive and a prescriptive element. Nevertheless, this analytic distinction makes it possible to investigate the specific power that biophysical explanations, and science in particular, have in policy-making

Before addressing how individuals actually influence environmental policy-making through their representations of science, attention must be given to the nature of scientific knowledge and the influence it has within politics independent of the persons who are assumed to wield it. In other words, what discursive power scientific explanations have in policy-making must be clear before it is possible to consider which individuals within the democratic polity should wield that power and how. To understand scientists’ power as possessors of scientific knowledge requires understanding how and where scientific knowledge fits within the practice of politics. Therefore, the rest of the discussion in this and the following two chapters will focus on science as an abstract body of knowledge while moving away from consideration of scientists or persons who rely upon scientific knowledge to explain biophysical relationships of cause and effect more generally. Specifically, there will be little talk of scientists as members of the polity or of the personal dimension of the procedures through which particular policies are formulated and implemented.

In the remainder of this chapter I will argue that: 1) science exerts discursive power by shaping the way in which the biophysical world is understood in a way similar to the more general discursive political power illuminated by Dryzek; 2) that this discursive power has political consequences, and is therefore a form of political power, by constraining the possibilities for environmental policies; 3) but Dryzek’s approach to understanding authentic

27 global democracy is not appropriate for understanding the potential problem with science’s power in environmental policy-making. Ultimately, in the following two chapters I will draw on

Estlund’s (2008) account of democratic authority to argue that the power identified in this chapter can satisfy the requirements for a democratically legitimate authority.

To understand the discursive power science wields, it is helpful to begin with more general considerations of discourses, particularly what they are and how they interact. A discourse is “a shared means of making sense of the world embedded in language” (Dryzek

2000, 18). In other words, discourses provide frameworks through which we can give meaning to the world of our experiences, or “sense data”. This ability to make meaning or sense of the world affects not only the power that discourses have but also the manners through which their power can be politically addressed; this understanding of discourses is similar to both the conceptions of Foucault and Habermas. However, Dryzek differs from both in his understanding of the power a discourse has over an individual. Foucault sees discourses as prisons within which individuals live while Habermas sees discourses as the locations of freedom (Dryzek 2000, vi). For Dryzek, discourses are sources of order that can act both as prisons and places of freedom, though never entirely as either (Dryzek 2000, vii). Discourses are prison-like because they constitute the individual’s identity by constraining the possible ways the world is understood and, in doing so, limit the possible meanings that can be given to that individual’s experiences (Dryzek 2000, 18).

Nevertheless, they are not entirely prisons because reflective choice is possible between discourses, presenting the possibility to choose less oppressive discourses over more oppressive ones (Dryzek 2000, 64). In this way, discourses have the power to both constrain the possibilities available to an individual as well as liberate the individual through reflection and choice.

Before we can understand how science can be understood discursively, it is necessary to be clear on what exactly is meant by the term “science.” Science is the body of knowledge that explains biophysical relationships of cause and effect that is produced through empirical testing of falsifiable hypotheses. Science, under this definition includes not just the findings of research published in peer-reviewed journal but also some local knowledge and other sources of empirically tested explanations of cause and effect6. Though this definition of science may seem overly broad, it importantly excludes all sources of biophysical explanation not resulting from falsifiable hypotheses about biophysical relationships of cause and effect, such as biophysical explanation resulting from divine revelation. It is also important to note that this definition excludes the social sciences from consideration because the relationships being investigated by social scientists are not only biophysical but also sociopolitical and my account of scientific authority does not include authority over sociopolitical relationships.

Now that it is clear what is meant by science, we can investigate how science should be understood discursively, as the descriptive component of some discourses. To begin it must be recalled that discourses give meaning to the world. Importantly, the act of meaning-making can be divided into two parts. First, an individual’s sense data or experiences must be ordered. This is done through descriptions of how the world works—that is, through explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect. Second, meaning is given to those experiences by evaluating them in light of prescriptions of how the world should be—that is, by considering our experiences in light of our sociopolitical values. Science provides explanations of our biophysical world, but does not provide evaluative or prescriptive criteria. For instance, science can tell us what happens at different levels of exposure to toxins, but it could not tell us what a

6 The importance of the inclusion of biophysical explanation beyond merely published research findings is returned to in the discussion of the representation of scientific authority in chapters 4 and 5

“safe” level is7. The inability of scientific explanation to offer normative guidance excludes it from being a complete discourse. By normative guidance I mean the ability to direct judgments about the (un)acceptable nature of norms or standards for correct behavior. Science is incapable of providing this direction because both biophysical explanations and sociopolitical values are necessary for making these judgments. But science’s inability to provide guidance does not exclude it from being treated as a component of discourses that possesses a limited form of discursive power. In other words, science’s inability to make meaning of sense data or provide normative guidance for how to respond to that data excludes it from being treated as a discourse, since discourses “revolve around a central storyline, containing opinions about both facts and values” (Dryzek 2000, 18). But, this does not exclude science from being treated as having discursive power.

We can begin to see the discursive power of science by turning our attention to the discourse of administrative rationalism. Administrative rationalism finds the solution to environmental problems by looking to scientific experts within state bureaucracies who are motivated by the public interest (Dryzek 2012, 90). Scientific explanation of biophysical relationships of cause and effect certainly have an important role in the discourse of administrative rationalism—as is seen in the focus on scientific experts as the appropriate problem-solving individuals. However, reliance upon scientific explanation to order sense data is not the only requirement of adherents to this discourse; the acceptability of the political power of state bureaucracies and the belief that scientific experts within bureaucracies are motivated by the public interest are also needed. As a second example of the discursive influence of science, consider the discourse of ecological modernization, which holds that conscious reconfiguration

7 This understanding of science, as providing explanations of biophysical mechanisms, and the example of determining “safe” levels, will be returned to below.

30 of the current capitalist political economy can result in achieving both economic development and environmental protection (Dryzek 2012, 173). Importantly, this reconfiguration results from the cooperation of governments, businesses, moderate environmentalists, and scientists (Dryzek

2012, 174). Again we see that scientific explanation of the biophysical world is necessary but insufficient to account for the main storyline of this discourse. In this case, the political power of governments is needed (but not necessarily of bureaucracies), as well as the economic power of businesses, and the social power of environmentalists. Though not prescribing how to achieve the ends of either administrative rationalism or ecological modernization, in both cases science has discursive power over the biophysical explanations used when understanding relationships of cause and effect

At this point, it may seem as if my identification of the discursive power of science is so broad as to make it a part of all environmental discourses. However, brief consideration of the discourse of green consciousness will show this is not the case. The essential story line of green consciousness is that industrial society induces a warped conception of persons and their place in the world; new kinds of human sensibilities, less destructive of nature, are required to remedy this situation. While the precise content of the required sensibilities varies, Dryzek argues they would generally involve a less manipulative and more humble human attitude to the natural world and to each other (2012, 197). It is certainly not the case that science has any necessary role in this discourse, though it may be the case that scientific explanation of biophysical relationships of cause and effect may be a tool for producing the change in sensibilities required of green consciousness or science may be a part of those new sensibilities. We see, now, that not only does science represent a body of knowledge, it should, also, be understood as constitutive of some discourses. Identifying this discursive capacity of science—to provide explanations of

31 biophysical relationships of cause and effect—is important for understanding the role of science in policy-making because it enables a clearer understanding of the particular power that science has. In order to illuminate the discursive power of science I must turn to Dryzek’s more general theory of authentic global democracy because he provides a clear understanding of how discursive power can be compatible with the requirements for democratic governance, though his theory cannot provide an explanation for the role science should have in policy-making. As I argue in the conclusion to this chapter, Estlund’s theory of political authority provides a more appropriate resource for understanding science’s discursive role as a source of biophysical explanation.

III. Science’s discursive role in democratic policy-making

Before addressing what role science should have in environmental policy-making, we should consider what is at stake when addressing the independent contribution of science on policy-making. To accomplish this task, we must begin by identifying the potential issues there are with science’s influence in environmental policy-making and what the appropriate method is for addressing them. In other words, what sort of political problem does science’s influence reflect and what sort of theory is necessary to address those problems? In the remainder of this chapter, I argue that science’s influence in environmental policy-making represents a potential problem of unwarranted political power, which requires justification for its treatment as legitimate authority. Further, I will argue that Dryzek’s concern with the authenticity of democratic control of lives is ill-suited to offer guidance in understanding why science’s influence should be understood as a legitimate authority rather than a mere expression of power.

In order to understand why Dryzek’s democratic theory should not be relied upon for understanding the discursive role science within environmental policy-making, I must first provide a more general understanding of Dryzek’s democratic theory than I have offered thus far. Discourses have causal force in the content and transmission of opinions (Dryzek 2000, 56).

When politics—the processes through which decisions are made to address collective problems

—is considered through the lens of the discursive power to shape opinions, we see that discourses provide the “institutional software” that orders deliberations in polities (2000, 18). It is this connection between discourses—as sources of opinions—and collective decision-making that turns Dryzek’s attention to the potential threat that discourses present to the authenticity of democratic control of decisions. Authentic democratic control requires that individuals are able to deliberatively reflect on their preferences without coercion—in other words, that individuals participate in democratic decision-making as “autonomous and competent actors” (Dryzek 2000,

8, 28). Insofar as the active exclusion of discourse(s) by the state threatens public association and deliberation in civil society and thus the ability of individuals to act autonomously within the state or civil society, the active exclusion of discourses from state decision-making threatens democratic authenticity (Dryzek 2000, 103-07)8.

In addition to directing Dryzek’s attention to the question of authenticity, the political power of discourses requires concern with the global democracy, not just the authenticity of democratic states. He focuses on global democracy because states are not the only entity

“making enforceable collective decision in response to social problems” (Dryzek 2000, 81).

More specifically, decisions made throughout the public sphere, as well as by other states, all

8 Though it need not keep us here, for Dryzek the appropriate response to his rejection of active exclusion of discourses by the state is not the state actively seeking to include all discourse, but rather a position of passive exclusion.

33 influence the lives of individuals. Thus, if those individuals are to have authentic democratic control over their own lives, their ability to participate within decision-making in these other arenas must be considered. In short, the role of discourses in the autonomous acts of individuals leads Dryzek to focus on the authenticity of global democracy. However, the descriptive component of discourses cannot directly contribute to the authenticity of individuals or democratic decisions because this component is only part of what is required to form the meaning-making framework of a discourse, and it is this entire framework or worldview that is required for authentic decision-making. In other words, the descriptive and prescriptive components of discourses, when treated in isolation from each other, should not be considered directly contributing to the authenticity of democratic decisions because neither can provide individuals with a framework for making sense of the world and, therefore, the influence of either on the acts of individuals is insufficient for judging the autonomy of those acts.

Nevertheless, the science and other sources of the descriptive component of discourses do have a limited form of discursive power that may be of concern—power to shape individuals’ understandings of their sense experiences. More specifically, science influences environmental policy-making by enabling and constraining the possible policy alternatives. By providing an explanation of the biophysical relationships of cause and effect, science identifies the range of possible biophysical actions that would have the effect of addressing the problem. In other words, scientific explanations exert power over policy-making by determining what policy outcomes are biophysically possible for achieving the already determined goal. Importantly, this direction of the range of policy propositions occurs independently of consideration of the desirability of the specific policy being proposed. For instance, the scientific explanation of the cause of climate change as resulting in part from the emission of carbon dioxide in the burning of

34 hydrocarbon fuels makes a carbon tax—a tax on the carbon content of fuels—a possible policy method of addressing this problem. Of course, more than just the natural scientific explanation of the effects of carbon is necessary for the possibility of a carbon tax as a policy. More specifically, social scientific explanations such as those provided by economics are required to explain how taxation will cause decreased emission of carbon dioxide. Nevertheless, it is the explanations of the natural sciences that make a tax on carbon a policy possibility.

Of course, some might say that the constraint I have identified is merely science’s ability to exclude the biophysically impossible, which would not seem to be a political problem. But, it is important to note that it is the descriptive component of discourses that determines the biophysically (im)possible. Therefore, it is only those individuals who already rely upon scientific explanation who would accept science as merely excluding the impossible. For those individuals who possess discourses that rely upon other descriptive sources the restriction of policy alternatives to those determined by science presents an externally imposed constraint on their choices. Since a polity is likely composed of multiple discourses, not all of which rely upon scientific explanation to describe the world, some reason must be given to justify enabling and constraining policy choices to only those that are compatible with scientific explanations. A more detailed example may help clarify this point. Science’s influence on environmental policy not only limits what specific policy questions are useful to consider for achieving a desired goal.

For instance, in the case of the problem of climate change, science opens up policy considerations to such possibilities as the regulation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, or towards geoengineering. It also limits them by determining policies that are either biophysically impossible or incapable of producing the desired biophysical effect; for example, science places questions of whether or not we should seek to regulate the amount of ultraviolet

35 radiation produced by the sun as beyond the realm of possible policy questions to ask in response to the identification of climate change as a problem9. This hypothetical—regulating solar output—is not to be confused with the proposal of geoengineers to manage solar radiation by modifying the reflectivity of the earth’s atmosphere. Of course, it might be objected that this regulation of solar UV emissions is physically impossible and thus science has no limiting role when ruling out that which is already beyond the realm of the “factually” possible. However, what is important here is the fact that science allows for the recognition of this “impossibility,” a classification that changes depending on the current content of science. Geoengineering offers an example of this relationship between science, policy, and the “impossible.” Fifty years ago, geoengineering was “impossible”, but, as scientific knowledge has changed, it is now seriously considerable as a policy option. The current controversy over whether or not geoengineering is a desirable policy response to climate change helps demonstrate the descriptive role of science in discourses. What the science has done in this case is make geoengineering biophysically conceivable; however evaluative criteria are necessary to determine the desirability of geoengineering as a policy.

Having clarified the power of science as a source of the descriptive component of discourses or biophysical explanation in environmental policy-making, I can now explain why turning from Dryzek’s concern with global authenticity is necessary to understand the desirable role for science within policy-making. We must turn from Dryzek’s concern with democratic authenticity because the discursive power of science cannot be understood as a direct contributor to this authenticity. Instead of considering the contribution of science to the authenticity of global democracy, the question that must be answered if we are to understand science’s proper

9 I provide more detailed discussion of solar radiation output as a cause of climate change in my discussion of Soon in Chapter 5.

36 role in environmental policy-making is: what reasons are there for accepting science as a source of legitimate authority over biophysical explanations within environmental policy-making. This is a question of authority—whether or not it is democratically acceptable to privilege the discursive power of science to constrain environmental policy choices over alternative sources of biophysical explanation—rather than of authenticity, and requires that we look to theories of authority within democratic states if we are to understand the proper role of science within democratic environmental policy-making.

IV. Conclusion

In this chapter, I have argued that the influence of science on politics must be decoupled from the influence of politics on scientific knowledge-production in order to prescribe what role either should have on producing the other. Further, science must be understood as component of discourses—the source of description through which the sense data is ordered—detached from individual discourse-holders to accurately understand its role in environmental policy-making.

As argued in the previous section, this discursive understanding of science draws attention to the influence it has over environmental policy-making by constraining the possible questions that may be asked of policy-makers and what remedies are understood as biophysically possible. In the most general of terms, this constraint has previously been identified, but not fully investigated (Bijker, Bal, and Hendriks 2009; Guston 2001). Moreover, while it has even been previously argued that this influence held by science in part explains why science is often politicized (Sarewitz 2004), what has been specifically lacking is an argument for what grounds make this constraint democratically acceptable and how clearly identifying these reasons will help to address the problem that the politicization of science presents . In other words, why

37 should we accept scientific constraints on environmental policy making within democracies?

And which constraints should we not accept?

For some, it may even seem commonsensical to argue that science has legitimate authority in the explanations of biophysical relationships used in forming environmental policies because of the greater reliability of scientific explanations. However, for those individuals who do not accept the science as the appropriate source of biophysical description within environmental policy-making, the epistemic reason just offered is insufficient justification for why scientific explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect should be used in environmental policy-making rather than the other sources of biophysical explanation that they accept because comparison between sources of biophysical explanation necessarily include consideration of metaphysical beliefs. In Chapters Two and Three, I will turn to Estlund’s epistemic proceduralist democratic theory (2008) to explain how the use of the discursive power of science by individuals within environmental policy-making should be understood as a case of democratically legitimate authority. But, of course, I must acknowledge that science, as a component of discourses, lacks the agency required to bear legitimate authority, which is why in

Chapters Four and Five we return our focus on individual persons. In those chapters, I argue for the ability of all individuals to represent scientific authority within policy-making and describe how those representations are made.

Chapter 2

Normative Consent and Scientific Authority

In the previous chapter, I clarified how we should understand the influence of science on policy-making in order equip us with the framework necessary to investigate that influence.

Specifically, I argued that the influence of scientific explanations of the biophysical world on environmental policy-making must be separated from the influence of politics on the production of scientific explanation. Further, I argued that the independent influence of science cannot be seen through the consideration of the acts of persons, and that we must rather approach science and its influence as a discursive influence on people. More specifically, science is one method for providing a necessary part of the means for making sense of the world—the descriptive component of that worldview or that which provides explanation of biophysical relationships of cause and effect—and by providing biophysical explanations enables and constrains choices for environmental policies. In this and the following chapter I answer the question of whether or not individuals should accept science’s power over environmental policy-making as described in the previous chapter. In this chapter, I begin to investigate how the inclusion scientific explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect within environmental policy-making influences policy-making and policy outcomes, and, importantly, ask the question of whether that power over policy-making should have authority. Having defended the legitimate authority of science as the source of biophysical explanation within policy-making in this and the next chapter, in

Chapters Four and Five I will demonstrate how the recognition of this authority will prevent the politicization of science.

A brief aside is necessary to address the agency I seem to be giving to science—a body of knowledge explaining biophysical relationships—through my choice of words. In the last chapter

I argued for understanding the power of science discursively. In other words, scientific explanations have power as ideas which enable and constrain the way that we understand the biophysical world. Through their communications people can become invested with the power of these ideas. In this chapter and the next, I am focusing on the legitimate authority people should have because of their use of scientific explanation. But, there are many different ways in which people can use the authority of science within policy-making and this discursive authority is available to more than just scientific experts—for reasons I will offer in Chapter Four.

Addressing the different types of possible agents here—such as politicians, scientist, and laypersons—and the different ways they should be treated when representing scientific knowledge within environmental policy-making would be premature. We must understand the role scientific knowledge, as such, should have in environmental policy-making before we can concern ourselves with the practices of representatives of scientific knowledge. Therefore, to avoid confusion about the type of person I am speaking of I will instead write as if the science is directly authoritative—but when I speak of the authority of science this should always be read as if there is some person discursively invoking the power of scientific ideas and it is that person who acts authoritatively. In short, I argue here for the role biophysical explanation, and specifically scientific explanation, should have in environmental policy-making separated from individual persons as representatives of that knowledge. Of course, additional investigation is required to clarify how the authoritative knowledge of science is represented by persons within policy-making which I offer in Chapters Four and Five.

As the biophysical explanatory part of a discourse, science explains relationships of cause and effect. What this means for policy-making is that science explains biophysical causes of phenomena that are considered problems based on some criteria exogenous to science, the possible biophysical alternatives to the current state of affairs, and the biophysical methods available to move from the problematic state of affairs to the desirable state of affairs. For instance, science provides explanation of acid rain as being caused by SOx and NOx, identifies a state of affairs in which less acid rain occurs as biophysically possible, and explains how capping

SOx and NOx emissions from coal burning power plants would reduce acid rain. Importantly, one consequence of using scientific explanations of the biophysical causes for problems and possible biophysical remedies, such as in the identification of SOx and NOx as the cause of acid rain, is that those explanations constrain the possibilities for policies. In other words, science influences environmental policy by constraining what policy questions could be understood as possible to ask (Bijker, Bal, and Hendriks 2009; Guston 2001). But, there are other sources of biophysical explanation available. Thus, the influence of science on environmental policy-making is to constrain the set of choices for environmental policies in a manner that not all would accept. In this and the following chapter, I will argue for the democratically legitimate authority of science in its discursive ability to constrain environmental policies choices. Then, in Chapters Four and

Five, I will defend an account of how that legitimate authority is represented by individuals in the policy-making process.

In order to understand the justification for science’s authority within environmental policy-making it is important to understand how biophysical explanations, and specifically scientific explanations, contribute to the success of environmental policies, and as a result how scientific explanations contribute to morally significant tasks through those policies. More

41 specifically, we should turn our focus to the environmental crisis of historic proportions that we face. The ability of the biophysical world to continue to support current human societies is uncertain. Increasing average temperatures, current and future loss of biodiversity, and the increased frequency of catastrophic weather events are all indicators that the Earth systems that support human and nonhuman life are being pushed beyond levels at which they can be maintained. Adding to the difficulty in effectively responding to this challenge is the complexity of the response needed to address the many elements of human societies that contribute to this problem.

Nevertheless, there are reasons to hope that the challenge of designing sustainable societies will be met. Scientific knowledge—knowledge of biophysical relationships of causes and effects produced through the scientific method—is the source of some of this hope because developing any solution requires explaining the biophysical processes through which particular environmental problems are caused and may be addressed. Nevertheless, environmental problems are not only biophysical, but also sociopolitical; thus, deciding on policies that are expected to contribute to sustainability requires both explanations of biophysical causes and effects as well as the understandings of these explanations as problems provided by our cultural values and social interests (Hulme 2009). But, not just any manner of inclusion of biophysical explanation within environmental policy-making will have an equal effect on the creation of successful environmental policies—policies directed at producing sustainable relationships between the sociopolitical and biophysical worlds—because it is often the values held by individuals as well as their social and political contexts which are the sources of policy disagreement (Sarewitz 2004). The inability of science to resolve policy disagreement leads

Sarewitz to conclude that science is “one among a plurality of cultural factors that help

42 determine how people frame a particular problem or position” and that science has no claim to

“special authority” (2004, 400). However, I argue here that the particular characteristics of science do provide grounds for its special authority within policymaking as the source of biophysical explanation.

Of course, to rely only on scientific knowledge as the source of biophysical explanation, which would necessarily result from recognizing its political authority, would privilege one explanation of the biophysical causes and effects over all others. Some might think that there is nothing objectionable about using scientific explanations rather than other sources of biophysical explanation because of the truth or greater reliability of science in the same way that there appears to be nothing objectionable about answering “2” to the question of what the sum of 1+1 is. However, the answer 2 would be objectionable without some reason being offered for why base-2 arithmetic is being excluded, or why base-10 is being privileged. Granting this authority to scientific explanation may not initially appear compatible with our expectations for democratic policymaking, particularly the expectation of respecting all citizens equally. If scientific explanations of the cause and effect relationships of the biophysical world are authoritative, other biophysical explanatory knowledges that are held by citizens are silenced.

The lack of equal opportunity to influence decisions offered to the beliefs of those citizens who do not accept scientific explanations may appear to deny them equal respect. By drawing on

Estlund’s theory of normative consent, I demonstrate that this worry is unfounded, and argue that scientific explanation is the authoritative source of biophysical explanation within environmental policy-making without threatening the democratic legitimacy of the resultant policies.

Additionally, my argument draws attention to the limits of claims to scientific authority.

Specifically, I argue that critical engagement in the process of scientific knowledge production is required for the resulting explanations to be authoritative within environmental policy-making.

In Section I, I argue against grounding scientific authority in the truth or reliability of scientific explanations, and more generally clarify why authority and not mere deference is required for the effective inclusion of scientific explanation within policy-making. In Section II,

I argue that scientific explanations of biophysical cause and effect are required to discharge the humanitarian duty to contribute to sustainability. In Section III, I draw on the theory of normative consent to argue for the authority of scientific explanations within policy-making.

Recognizing the controversial nature of the theory of normative consent, I also briefly present an alternative grounding for scientific authority primarily drawing on Gutting’s pragmatic liberalism (1999). In Section IV, I clarify what it means for the scientific explanation of biophysical relationships of cause and effect to be the source of political authority within environmental policy—in other words, what it means to obey the commands of scientific knowledge-claimers. In this section, I use the Ecological Society of America’s (ESA) summary report on biological invasives (Lodge et al. 2006) to illustrate how this influence can be treated as commands requiring obedience, as all relationship of authority require. I conclude, in Section

V, by suggesting ways my argument relates to the broader questions of the relationship between science and society.

I. Why Deference to Scientific Expertise Will Not Prevent the Politicization of Science

Despite biophysical explanation not being all that is needed to produce democratically legitimate environmental policies, we should not lose sight of the important and necessary role that biophysical explanation has. For instance, a policy of fertilizing the oceans with iron in

44 order to sequester carbon would not be a rational response to the problem of climate change without some account of the biophysical causes and effects of global warming that includes explanation of the role of iron salts on algal growth to connect this proposed solution to the problem. Of course, science is not the only body of knowledge that explains the relationships of cause and effect in the biophysical world. Thus, if scientific biophysical explanations should be authoritative within environmental policy-making, I must provide justification for not only preferring it over other explanatory knowledges, but also explain why scientific explanations should be treated as authoritative commands to be obeyed.

It is worth spending a moment here to clarify what it means to scientific explanations as commands to be obeyed. It first must be recalled that science has the discursive power to determine how the biophysical relationships of the world are understood. Additionally, when I speak of the “authority of science” I mean the authority of individuals in their use of the discursive power of science. Thus, the command being obeyed in these instances is the command of an individual—in their use of scientific knowledge—that the world be understood in a certain way. In other words, when I use scientific explanations in my communication I am commanding the audience to that communication to understand the biophysical relationships of cause and effect in a manner compatible with scientific explanations.

Some may think that the truth of scientific explanations is sufficient reason for preferring scientific explanation over other biophysical explanations. If scientific knowledge is true, it will provide the correct account of biophysical causes and their effects, and that environmental policies directed by this true account will be more likely to achieve sustainability than those directed by false understandings of biophysical cause and effect. On this account, the truth of

45 scientific knowledge of the biophysical world explains why scientific explanation should be included in policy-making and be preferred over other biophysical knowledges.

However, many would reject the possibility for scientific truth, or the possibility of truth about biophysical relationships of cause and effect more generally (Bloor 1991; Latour 1987).

Kitcher refers to acceptance of the position that science provides the “COMPLETE TRUE

STORY OF THE WORLD” as “Legend” because such arguments have in the recent past been accepted as overstating the possible achievements of scientific investigation despite nearly universal belief in scientific truth historically (1993, 3 emphasis in original). Though it may be thought that few individuals currently accept the ability of science to provide truth, the discursive power of claims to “scientific truth” is still common. For instance, the March 2015 cover story of

National Geographic Magazine about distrust in science included multiple references to scientific truth by the author and in a quotation of Francis Collins, the director of the National

Institutes of Health (Achenbach 2015). Additionally, despite wide rejection of the ability of science to produce objective and universal truth, a closely related, but weaker, position is defended by Boghossian (2006). Instead of arguing for the possibility of objective truth about the biophysical world and the ability of scientific explanation to provide it, Boghossian focuses on the opposing argument—that knowledge of the biophysical world is contingent upon the social and material context within which it is produced. He concludes that there are fatal objections to that position and, therefore, “we are capable of arriving at belief about how things are that is objectively reasonable, binding on anyone capable of appreciating the relevant evidence regardless of their social or cultural perspective” (Boghossian 2006, 130-31). Boghossian’s argument is not an explicit defense of the possibility of objective truth, but, by concluding that the most likely alternatives are indefensible, it does conclude that knowledge of the biophysical

46 world can be truth-bearing—perhaps not the entire objective and universal truth but at least bearing some degree of truth.

Though claims to the truth of scientific explanations, or their partial truth-bearing ability, may seem promising for justifying science’s authority in environmental policy-making, truth cannot be used as justification within democratic politics because this would fail to respect metaphysical differences in pluralist societies (Friedman 1973). This exclusion to claims of truth within politics is usually discussed in regard to metaphysical truths, so it may not be initially clear why this exclusion should be extended to biophysical explanatory truths. The truth of scientific knowledge cannot be used to justify its inclusion in policy-making because of the controversial role of metaphysical presupposition in scientific knowledge-production.

Specifically, many argue that the generation of scientific knowledge and the justification of scientific methods are unavoidably influenced by values (Hackett et al. 2008, sec. I; Nola and

Sankey 2000). If these positions are correct and values influence the production of scientific explanations, then clearly scientific truths would not be permissible justifications in a pluralist society for reasons of a lack of respect for value differences. Importantly, even if the arguments for the unavoidable inclusion of values in scientific knowledge-production are incorrect, the truth of scientific knowledge would be impermissible justification for inclusion in policy-making. As noted by Hacking, where one stands in the debate over how scientific knowledge is produced depends on the explanation chosen for the stability of scientific knowledge, the contingency or inevitability of particular explanations within science, and the degree to which one is a nominalist. The position one takes on these issues with regard to scientific knowledge- production all depend upon the metaphysical presuppositions made (1999, ch. 3). Therefore, any resolution to the conflict over the role of values in scientific knowledge-production, and the

47 possible truth of that knowledge, rests on prior metaphysical assumptions. That those assumptions are required to ground scientific truth means that any claim to the truth or partial truth-bearing of science is an impermissible justification for authority within democratic environmental policy-making.

The truth of scientific explanation is not the only reason one could offer for why science’s use in environmental policy-making should be authoritative. Alternatively, we might consider the reliability of biophysical explanations. More specifically, it could be expected that science provides more reliable explanations than other sources because scientific explanations are accepted because they are reliable (Kuhn 1996). Additionally, science can still be considered the most reliable source of explanation of biophysical phenomena even after accepting the influence of the values held by the researching subject—the scientist—on the knowledge produced (Kitcher 1993). This suggests that scientific explanation would be preferable in policy- making because knowledge that reliably explains the causes and effects of biophysical phenomena would be more effective in achieving sustainability than knowledge that is less reliable. The greater success of environmental policies at achieving its goals by relying upon scientific explanations of causes and effects when compared to other systems for explaining the biophysical world may seem to be sufficient grounds to support the authority of science in environmental policy-making. Since successful policies are desirable and the likelihood of success increases with the increased reliability of the explanations used, it would seem as if scientific explanations should be used when making environmental policies.

However, to stop here and rest my argument on these pragmatic grounds—that the greater expected success justifies scientific explanation having authority within environmental policy-making—is problematic. When disagreement exists over what explanation is the reliable

48 one that should be used in policy-making some individual or individuals must be responsible for deciding which to use. But, it is unclear that those individuals can be identified in a way that will be acceptable to all reasonable citizens. All reasonable citizens must be able to accept the selection of judges of reliability of scientific explanations because those judges are ultimately wielding political power. To see why this is the case, it is important to remember that my focus is on the role of scientific explanation within democratic policy-making. Environmental policies, as a part of democratic politics more generally, represent the collective coercive power of the citizens. Therefore, when justifying policy-decisions individuals must offer reasons that others could accept as free and equal citizens (Rawls 2005, 1.2). But how does this requirement for public reasons bear on the identification of the scientific explanations used within environmental policy-making? It should be recalled that, in the previous chapter, I argued that scientific explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect have the discursive power to enable and constrain the range of choices for environmental policies. Insofar as this power of explanation over policy choices has consequences for the use of the collective power of environmental policies, the determination of what explanations are used should also be considered part of the collective coercive power of citizens expressed in politics and requiring acceptable justification Importantly, this is not to suggest that enforcing environmental policies requires the coercive enforcement of beliefs about the biophysical world. However, the enforcement of environmental policies requires that citizens act as if the biophysical explanation used to make that policy is reliable, regardless of whether or not the citizen believes that explanation or not. For instance, enforcing a ban on chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in order to prevent depletion of the ozone presupposes that CFCs are a biophysical cause of that depletion.

Thus, the biophysical explanation used in policy-making is a part of the coercive power of that

49 policy that requires justification that all reasonable citizens can accept. Further, if only reliable scientific explanations are to be used as biophysical explanations within policy-making, justification is required for how the individuals are identified who will determine what explanation is the reliable scientific one.

In order to understand why the reliability of scientific explanations fails to justify its authority within policy-making, I must address why reasonable citizens would object to the criteria used for determining what that reliable knowledge is. Though I cannot address all possible methods for identifying reliable explanations, I will address the ones that I believe to be most likely reasons to be offered. After those specific arguments, I use the rest of this section to argue for a more general reason for why reliability should be rejected as a justification for the political authority of scientific explanations. Specifically, I argue that the deferential relationships that results from acceptance of the reliability of science will not prevent the politicization of science.

Since it is the people whose power is being wielded and who require justification, it might seem as if the explanation identified by the people could be justified as the appropriate version to use. However, public understanding of all science is significantly less than the understanding of experts in each field. Thus, some individuals might reasonably object to their own inclusion in this determination, or the inclusion of others of equally limited capacity. For instance, I lack any formal training in climatology and would be less able to judge the reliability of biophysical explanations of the relationships of the earth’s climate than a climatologist.

Therefore, I might object to the inclusion of my judgment in this case because I will not expect my judgment contribute to the identification of what explanations are reliable. This might suggest that that those with scientific expertise in a field should be the judges—that reason could

50 be given for relying upon experts. However, the boundary between disciplinary knowledges is not always clear nor is it always clear which discipline’s knowledge is the appropriate explanation for a particular policy-question. For instance, both ecologists and ornithologists have knowledge that may contribute to the management of the Gunnison Sage Grouse, in order to prevent the species from becoming endangered. Thus, there is reason to object to deferring to a specific discipline’s expertise for judging what explanations should be used in policy-making.

One response to this objection would be to rely upon each discipline to judge the reliability of knowledge produced within it—for instance, through peer-review—and then rely on some other body to aggregate this knowledge for the purpose of policy-making, such as is the case with the

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). However, the IPCC and other advisory bodies like it cannot act as an acceptable source of authoritative explanations within policy- making because the reliable scientific explanations identified by the IPCC cannot speak for themselves within policy-making and the epistemic reliability of the determinations of the IPCC is insufficient to warrant granting its members authority within policy-making. More specifically, the claims made by representatives of the biophysical explanations of the IPCC cannot be merely biophysical claims (Turner 2007). In other words, the epistemic authority of the advisory body does not provide reason for accepting the members of that body as political authorities—that is to say, authorities within democratic policy-making.

In the preceding discussion I have attempted to demonstrate why I am skeptical of the ability to justify the epistemic authority of science in policy-making in a manner that would be acceptable to all citizens. Having not provided a general argument for why reliability should be rejected as grounds for justifying the epistemic authority of science within policy-making, I must remain open to possibility that the epistemic authority of science can be justified for policy-

51 making. Nevertheless, even if that justification were provided the acceptance of the epistemic authority of scientific explanation within policy-making was accepted by all citizens would not prevent the politicization of science because the greater reliability of scientific explanation over other biophysical explanations merely justifies deference to scientific knowledge in policy- making. And, as I argue in the remainder of this section, obedience to political authority, not deference to epistemic authority, is necessary to prevent the politicization of science. Political authority over the biophysical explanation used in policy-making is required because of two characteristics of authority relationships that deference lacks10. First, authority requires a degree of error tolerance in the authoritative command—these commands should be obeyed even when believed to be wrong by the individual under authority, at least to some degree. Second, the authority of a command is independent of the content of that command. The reason for obedience depends on some other characteristic of the relationship, such as a promise that was made, rather than the content of the command itself. Deference, on the other hand, is predicated on the deferring individual believing her judgment is worse than that of the individual(s) being deferred to, and this comparison in judging ability depends upon the content of the command.

It may be helpful to consider a nonscientific example to clarify the differences in error tolerance between deferential and authority relationships and their relation to the content of the commands. Consider the relationship between an auto mechanic and a driver of average automotive knowledge, such as myself. I may replace the brake pads on my car when a mechanic tells me I should because I believe she knows more than I do in this case. However, if the same

10 A full account of authority relationships would require consideration of many additional characteristics. I rely upon Estlund’s theory of normative consent as grounds for democratic authority, instead of offering that complete theory of authority here, which would require considerable space and move us far afield of the question of scientific authority in environmental policy-making. I discuss only those aspects of authority relationships that are significant for understanding the specific authority of science in policy-making and provide reference throughout to sources for more detailed discussion of material not being addressed.

52 mechanic were to tell me that I should quit my job, I am less likely to do so because in that case

I believe my judgment is better than hers. In this example we see the role of content dependence on deferential relationships because the content of what the mechanic tells me makes a difference for whether or not I defer to her judgment over my own. In cases where the command relates to the expertise of the mechanic—maintenance of my car—I defer to her judgment. However, when the content of commands address subjects where the mechanic is not expected to judge better than I am—such as, my choice in occupation—deference is not justified. On the other hand, if the mechanic had authority over me, I would have reason to obey her commands regardless of whether or not the command related to auto maintenance.

The reason for deferring to the mechanic—her greater knowledge of auto maintenance— also demonstrates the important role of error (in)tolerance in deferential relationships. I defer to the mechanic because of the content of her command and my expectation that the content is a better judgment than my own. If I did not believe that the mechanic is correct that my brakes require replacement I would not have reason to defer to her. Should the mechanic tell me that my brake pads require changing when I know that they were just replaced yesterday, it is unlikely that I will do as told by this mechanic because I would believe the mechanic mistaken and no longer expect her judgment to be better than mine. Some might argue that in this situation the mechanic would show me the brake pads in order to provide evidence to support her judgment, but that would modify my relationship to the mechanic in such a way that it would no longer be one of deference. By providing me with evidence I am no longer deferring my judgment to the mechanic’s, rather I am participating alongside the mechanic in judging the need to replace my brake pads. Therefore, in actual deferential situations—where I defer my judgment rather than participate in judging—there is little tolerance for erroneous commands.

Science’s greater reliability can justify deference to scientific explanations in environmental policy-making but not its authority because the claim to reliability is content dependent. In other words, the argument from reliability to justify scientific influence on policy- making holds that scientific explanation should be preferred over other biophysical explanations because the content of scientific explanations are more likely to be correct accounts of the cause and effect relationships of the biophysical world than other sources of explanation. On this account, should the content of the explanations of science become more uncertain, perhaps as a result of disagreement over the best interpretation of experimental results, there would no longer be reason to use scientific explanations over others because the scientific explanation, in this case, would not clearly be more reliable than alternative explanations.

Unfortunately, deference to scientific explanation within environmental policy-making is insufficient for avoiding the politicization of science. Specifically, the uncertainty over when deference to scientific explanation is justified allows for the use of scientific explanation to obscure relations of power. Uncertainty over when deference is warranted is unavoidable because of the contestable nature of scientific knowledge-production and the content dependent nature of deferential relationships. More specifically, a principle that requires deferring to the most reliable biophysical explanation cannot justify any specific instance of deference to scientific explanation prior to the establishment of a consensus among the appropriate knowledge-producers to the correctness of the knowledge. Though it may seem obvious that deference is only owed when consensus exists, it is the determination of the existence of a consensus and the requirement to act prior to these consensuses that prove problematic for avoiding the politicization of science.

We can see why a relationship of deference fails to prevent the politicization of science by considering the current treatment of scientific knowledge in the U.S. For instance, in many cases, politicians justified delaying policy responses to climate change by drawing attention to the uncertainty of climate science (Dunlap and McCright 2011). Only when scientific knowledge is deferred to, rather than treated authoritatively, is a lack of consensus about specific scientific findings an acceptable justification for inaction. In other words, deference does not prevent the politicization of science because the status of biophysical explanations—the existence of consensus or uncertainty—is used as justification for political (in)action rather than normative positions. A lack of consensus among scientific experts—a lack of certainty among the judgments of scientific knowledge-holders—brings doubt to arguments that scientific judgments are better than other judgments and thus deserving deference because without consensus the expectation for the explanations reliability is uncertain. To see the importance of scientific consensus for justifying deference we must briefly consider the source of the scientific knowledge that warrants deference. Specifically, it must be kept in mind that these explanations begin as the result of judgments by individual scientists in producing research findings and their eventual agreement through the process of peer-review. When the content of this aggregate judgment—the judgment of the body of scientific peers—is not clear or it has not yet formed policy-makers cannot be certain of what scientific explanation is the appropriate one to be deferential towards. In other words, there is no clear determinant for which explanation is the reliable one and should be deferred to when scientific explanation lacks a unitary voice.

It might be thought that the scientific explanation held by the majority of scientists—or more generally the appropriate knowledge-holders however that is determined—is the scientific explanation that requires deference. However, the support of the majority may be a result of the

55 social or political power of that majority as much as a result of the accuracy of their account of the cause and effect relationships of the biophysical world (Latour 1987). It is worth noting that non-human agency need not be accepted, as Latour does, in order to support this particular conclusion. For instance, the ability to investigate the scientific explanation for the mass of some fundamental particles—the Higgs boson—requires the use of the Large Hadron Collider (the most powerful particle collider currently in existence). The Higgs boson need not be consider an agent in order to conclude that access to the Large Hadron Collider is influenced by social and political powers and that without access to the Collider the accuracy of the experiment that identified the Higgs boson cannot be questioned. Given the potential role of social and political power in the stability of scientific explanations, deference will not result in a higher likelihood of achieving sustainability, regardless of agreement on whether deference is warranted, because the reasons for deferring do not necessarily reflect greater biophysical reliability of a particular scientific claim. In other words, that scientific knowledge is generally considered reliable does not entail that every scientific explanation must also be reliable Therefore, judgments of whether deference to a specific scientific explanation is required is open to disagreement over whether or not that claim is reliable or an unreliable outlier. It should be remembered that our concern with the biophysical explanation used in environmental policy-making is motivated by our concern for how obedience to that policy can successfully addressing the problems associated with environmental collapse. The lack of an increased expectation of policy success by deferring to science suggests some other relationship than deference is required for understanding how biophysical explanation within environmental policy-making contributes to our ability to respond to the threat of environmental collapse.

In this section, I have argued that the possible truth or reliability of scientific explanations of the cause and effect relationships of the biophysical world cannot justify the authority of these explanations within environmental policy-making. I also argued that a relationship of deference to any biophysical explanation within policy-making—the expected consequence of accepting science as epistemic authority because it provides more reliable biophysical explanations—will not prevent the politicization of science. In the next two sections, I draw on the theory of normative consent to argue for the authority of scientific explanation within policy-making.

More specifically, I argue that obedience to the authority of science is required to discharge our duty to contribute to achieving sustainability. Then in Section IV, I clarify what obedience to scientific authority within environmental policy-making actually requires of us.

II. Normative Consent and a Duty to Contribute to Sustainability

In order to understand why science should not only be included in environmental policy- making but treated as an authority, consideration must be given to justifications for political relationships of authority. I turn to theories of political authority because the authority we are concerned with is only within the political practices of environmental policy-making. As we will see, consent accounts of obligation provide a more promising approach than the epistemological accounts of authority based on truth or reliability that were discussed in the previous section.

Consent explains our obligation specifically to science’s contribution to environmental policy- making—that of providing biophysical explanation—by focusing our attention on reasons why we should promise to obey scientific explanations’ constraint on how the biophysical world is understood. Among consent accounts of political obligation, Estlund’s normative consent theory proves the most promising (2008, ch.7; 2009, 2011). I will present a brief summary of Estlund’s argument for normative consent as grounds for political authority before turning to its

57 application to the case of scientific authority within environmental policy-making because this familiarity with his theory will be beneficial for understanding how science’s authority is a more specific and limited form of political authority11.

Estlund’s theory of normative consent begins by identifying an asymmetry present in past accounts of the obligation-creating properties of consent. Specifically, he asks: if certain conditions (duress, lack of complete knowledge, etc.) nullify acts of consent—where nullification is understood as a failure to ground an obligation to do that which was specified— then why is it not true that under other conditions refusal to consent is also null? Additionally, what conditions would cause a refusal to consent to be nullified (Estlund 2008, 121)? He argues that the moral wrongness of a refusal to consent is one condition in which that refusal would be void, and this is what makes his theory one of normative consent (Estlund 2008, 122)12. In other words, a refusal to consent is null if one is wrong to refuse one’s consent. Similar to null consent, null refusal to consent produces the same outcome as if the nullified act had not occurred. Since consent to authority establishes authority, null refusal to consent would also establish authority.

In an earlier version of this theory, Estlund (2005) argued that this symmetry principle only applies to consent theories that accept reasons for nullifying consent external to the individual’s will, such as the violation of an “inalienable” right, and that consent theories that are will- tracking—where consent is nullified only for reasons that promote the actual will of individuals—would not face this symmetry problem. However, as will be discussed in more detail below, Estlund’s later formulation of normative consent (2008) modifies his position about the potential will-tracking nature of normative consent. The reason to note this shift here is that it

11 For other summaries of Estlund’s account of normative consent see; Edmundson (2011, sec II), Estlund (2011, 379), Koltonski (2013, sec 1), and Richardson (2011, sec III). 12 For critical discussion of this principle of symmetry between the possibilities for the nullification of consent and nonconsent see; Edmundson (2011, sec III), Koltonski (2013, sec 2), Richardson (2011, sec VI), and Talisse and Harbour (2009, sec II).

58 opens all consent theories to Estlund’s symmetry principle and raises important questions about the moral power of consent. In particular, if expressed consent is nullified when that consent is coercive or uninformed—even though consenting appears to be the will of the individual—why is it not the case the non-consent is also nullified under certain conditions even though nonconsent appears to be the will of the individual?

However, most individuals are not, or have never been, in a situation where express consent to a political authority could be offered. Therefore, the account presented above must be treated as hypothetical—establishing authority through the nullification of a refusal to consent does not seem to apply to most individuals since most individuals do not actually refuse their consent. More explanation is needed to demonstrate how this hypothetical situation of null refusal connects to people’s actual experience of neither refusing nor consenting to a political authority. For example, other consent theories ground political obligation in the deliberate undertaking of an obligation through the performance of some individual act, such as promising

(Simmons 1979, 57). This is an attractive way to ground political obligations because any restriction upon an individual’s freedom has been willed by that individual (Richardson 2011,

311). But for normative consent—a type of hypothetical consent—there is no explicit demonstration of the will of individuals to undertake this obligation, which raises the question: how should normative consent be connected to the wills of individuals? Estlund argues that normative consent should be understood as a quasi-voluntarist account of consent where an individual would have willed something if asked, though of course she has never been asked and thus never actually willed it as would be required of a voluntarist account (Estlund 2011, 375). In contrast to a voluntarist account where explicit consent is connected to an individual’s will, normative consent’s focus on what would be willed if asked is valuable here because, in the real

59 world, few people are actually asked to consent to scientific authority within policy-making. The lack of an opportunity to choose to consent or to refuse consent should be understood as an occurrence of passive nonconsent, meaning that consent to authority is not explicitly refused by most individuals but they equally cannot be thought to have actually consented—the situation of most people is one of nonconsent resulting from a lack of action.

The hypothetical account summarized above is connected to the actual experience of most individuals because it recognizes the similarity in normative judgments of acts of hypothetical refusal of consent and actual passive nonconsent. Specifically, if it is wrong to refuse consent, it is also wrong to passively not consent, at least insofar as a passive nonconsenter would be wrong to refuse consent if given the opportunity. One example of passive nonconsent can be seen in the current opt-in organ donor program of the US13. Few people actively consent to be organ donors through opt-in programs—for instance, by checking a box on driver’s license application or renewal forms as is required to indicate consent in many States.

The fact, though, that most people do not check the appropriate box should not be taken as those individuals having refused their consent. Those not opting into organ donor programs should be considered to have refused the consent iff it is their will to not be an organ donor, which requires that they have considered their choices and intentionally chosen not to opt in. So, consent is not actually refused by those individuals who fail to check the box for some reason other than making an intentional choice about organ donation, such as being in a hurry and overlooking the question. These individuals should be treated as having passively nonconsented—having neither consented nor refused consent.

13 The example of organ donor programs is drawn from Saunders (2010)

Moreover, that they have neither opted into or out of the program raises the question of how they should be treated. Individuals who have intentionally checked the box have expressed their wills by consenting, individuals who have intentionally not checked the box expressed their wills by refusing consent, but these individuals who have neither willed to be included or excluded from the program cannot be accounted for under a theory of actual consent. The theory of normative consent, though, provides a way to account for these people: it argues that these individuals should be treated as if they are good persons who do what they should to discharge their obligations. Therefore, in this case, we should treat those individuals who have neither consented nor refused consent as if they had consented because they would have if the opportunity were brought to their attention.

In short, the theory of normative consent holds that individuals should be understood as under an authority relationship in situations in which it would be wrong for that individual to refuse consenting to that authority if given the opportunity. If science offers the authoritative explanation of biophysical cause and effect within policy-making—as I argue that it does—then

I must demonstrate why it would be wrong for individuals in democracies not to consent to the use of scientific biophysical explanations when forming environmental policies. It should be recalled that when I am speaking about environmental policy-making I am referring to more than just the implementation of legislation within bureaucracies—a step in policy-making where most individuals have little role—and it is this broader understanding of policy-making which makes the consent of citizens necessary. I will satisfy this task in two parts. First, I will argue that individuals have a duty to contribute to the task of achieving sustainability and that the wrongness of not consenting to the use of biophysical explanations of some kind in environmental policy-making is a result of failing to discharge this duty. Second, I will argue

61 that scientific explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect can be justified for inclusion within democratic policy-making as a source of biophysical explanation. Therefore, the wrongness of not consenting to the use of biophysical explanation and the sole ability of science to satisfy this requirement makes it wrong not to promise to consent to the use of scientific explanations within environmental policy-making.

As we will see, the requirement for political action in discharging our duty to achieve sustainability provides the source for science’s political authority, but how to understand sustainability as an environmental policy goal must first be clarified. Past arguments have found an obligation to contribute to sustainability in the requirements of intergenerational justice (Barry

1999; de-Shalit 1995; Wissenburg 2013), or in the principle of non-exploitation (Goodin 1999).

Among those who ground a duty to contribute to sustainability, there are differences that are important for how the duty of sustainability could be discharged by specific environmental policies. For instance, de-Shalit’s communitarian conception of intergenerational justice (1995, ch. 1) would support policies that seek to sustain the practices of communities as well as the lives of individual members whereas Wissenburg’s focus on the rights of individuals leads him to conclude that all that intergenerational justice demands is that scarce goods—such as natural resources—remain available for future use (2013, 173-77). Overall, it can be seen that the source of this duty will affect what specifically is required to discharge it. Fortunately, we need not resolve which account of our duty to achieve sustainability is correct in order to understand the role of science as a source of biophysical explanations within environmental policy-making because, regardless of the particular conception chosen, the ability to discharge the duty to contribute to sustainability requires collective action and, more specifically, political action.

Further, determining which grounds are the appropriate ones for understanding our duty to

62 contribute to sustainability is not necessary for theorizing about the role of scientific explanation in making policies that contribute to discharging this duty because all accounts of what is required for sustainability include biophysical explanations. This is not to say that all accounts of sustainability will require the same specific biophysical explanations—what explanations of cause and effect are required will depend upon what is considered a problem or threat to sustainability. Nevertheless, all accounts of how to discharge the duty to sustainability will require a source of biophysical explanation, and as a source of biophysical explanation science can be treated similarly regardless of which understanding of the duty is accepted.

Accepting that individuals have a duty to contribute to sustainability—based on one of the accounts mentioned above or some other account not mentioned—does not clarify what their contribution should be. What individuals should contribute or to whom/what that contribution should be made is not addressed by simply recognizing that individuals should provide their fair shares in achieving sustainability. Immediately below, I argue that our duty to contribute to achieving sustainability requires us to obey democratically produced environmental policies.

Obedience to environmental policies would discharge our duty regardless of the source of the duty because the specific policies that are made and obeyed could address the differences in the requirements of the various arguments for the duty of sustainability—which is why those sources need not keep us here. It is important to clarify why this obedience is a sufficient contribution to achieving sustainability, even if specifying the specific policies to be obeyed is not necessary.

The environmental problems identified and addressed in environmental policies are particular instances of the greater environmental crisis that the task of sustainability seeks to address. These problems cannot be effectively addressed by private individuals because current socio-economic systems are at least partially the cause of these problems. For instance, by

63 simply by living within the U.S. and relying upon U.S. infrastructure, an individual’s ecological footprint—a measure of the amount of biologically productive land and water required to support the life individuals or populations—is greater than would be sustainable should her level of resource use be extended to all currently existing humans (Borucke et al. 2013). Therefore, any choice made by private individuals within the U.S. to limit their ecological impact cannot achieve the task of producing a sustainable ecological footprint. It might seem as if living off the grid—completely independent of US infrastructure—would provide a way for an individual to remain in the US and have a sustainable ecological footprint. However, merely by living within the US, individuals receive benefits, such as national defense, which do not rely upon the individuals lifestyle choices and which exceed the limits of a sustainable footprint. Therefore, an individual exceeds her sustainable footprint by living within the borders of the U.S., regardless of any choices made in how that life is lived. Thus, some reform of our collective socio- economic systems is necessary to achieve sustainability.

But, individuals cannot easily achieve the reforms of these social services necessary to achieve sustainability. The costs of these reforms are high. Additionally, the benefits are gained by everyone within the system, even those who do not contribute. Therefore, it should not be expected that individuals will choose to bear these costs without some expectation of others contributing equally. Additionally, the interconnectedness of the global biophysical environment hinders groups from providing private benefits to members for their contributions towards achieving sustainability. The lack of private benefit for contributions towards achieving sustainability will limit contributors to only those individuals who support the cause being pursued and have sufficient discretionary resources to contribute without expecting personal or private returns on the sacrifice (Davis and Wurth 1993). Unfortunately, global biophysical

64 interconnectedness also requires broader participation in the task of reforming socio-economic institutions to achieve sustainability than the mere contribution of discretionary resources. In an ideal world, all individuals would contribute to achieving sustainability since it is our moral duty to do so. But, even in that ideal world, political institutions would be necessary to coordinate the contributions of individuals because of the diversity of ways individuals could contribute, directly or indirectly, and the difficulty in determining which of these possible contributions should be obligatory. Specifically, controversy surrounds the determination of what specific contribution would be considered fair sacrifices for all individuals and sufficient to achieve sustainability, and resolving this controversy generates a new controversy over determining what a sustainable society is—a controversy that falls within the more general political problem of specifying the good society.

In addressing these problems, we will see that obeying environmental policy is the only contribution that is defensible as the minimum contribution by all and also a sufficient contribution for actually achieving sustainability. I earlier claimed that normative consent provides the best account of the political authority of scientific explanations within policy- making and that claim entails a rejection of the argument from fairness as the grounds for this obligation. Thus, my argument for an obligation to environmental policies based on fairness might appear problematic. However, no such problem exists because I did not claim that normative consent is the best account of our political obligations in all cases. That the theory of normative consent presents the best account of the authority of science within environmental policy-making does not mean that some other account, such as fairness, will not do a better job of explaining other obligations.

Determining what reforms to society are needed to achieve sustainability and what contribution by individuals is sufficient for achieving those reforms is neither immediately clear nor uncontroversial. For instance, an individual might seek to reduce solid waste production by initiating a recycling program, but it could not be expected that an individual’s recycling would be effective in reducing solid waste—given the capital needed to initiate and run a recycling program—without others also choosing to participate. Therefore, attempting to develop a recycling program is unlikely to contribute to achieving sustainability unless others choose to contribute in this way as well. Even with perfect compliance many of the specific tasks contributed to will not be effective because the ends of some tasks will actually conflict with each other. The example of recycling can also be used to illustrate how different contributions to achieving sustainability can conflict. In this case, consider waste paper specifically. A more sustainable treatment of paper than depositing it in a landfill would be to either recycle or compost it. Within one community, Sam develops a paper recycling program while Jon develops a composting program. Though both are contributing to sustainability to some degree, a greater contribution would be achieved if they worked together. This gain becomes clear once we consider the material demands of each program. Both would require collection containers, transportation of the paper from the collection location(s) to the treatment facility, and separate treatment equipment. In order to run both programs, more materials are required than if all of the paper was directed to one program. Therefore, which tasks are pursued matters for discharging one’s duty to sustainability and to resolve both issues with determining how individuals should contribute to achieving sustainability political coordination is required.

Additionally, different choices in decisions about what specific characteristics of biophysical impacts on society should be reformed will produce different sustainable societies

66 that reflect different sociopolitical values. What one understands a sustainable society to be is more than just a question about the provision of biophysical necessities—sustainability is also a sociopolitical problem. In other words, two societies may be biophysically equal, meaning that the relationship between that society and the biophysical sources for satisfying its material needs can be maintained into the future, but they may not be equally just or good according to some individual’s values. The conflicting conceptions of sustainable societies presented by Bookchin and Foreman helps to illustrate this point. Though both theorists agree that hierarchical societies must be eliminated before sustainability can be achieved, they strongly disagree about the methods that should be used to eliminate hierarchy and what the society that will result from this elimination will be like (Chase 1991). What conception of sustainability is chosen would also require justification because the differences in these conceptions result from differences in values that the principle of equal respect requires giving equal voice in the policy process.

Fortunately, the difficulty in coordinating the collective actions undertaken to achieve sustainability and the justification required for these choices is avoided when addressing the authority of scientific explanation within environmental policy-making. The determination of individuals’ minimum contributions to achieving sustainability does not require defending either an account of what a particular sustainable society should be pursued or justifying particular actions that should be undertaken to achieve this society. Instead, democratic decision procedures should be relied upon to provide the justifications for the end pursued and the actions taken to achieve it and to respect individuals’ differences in accounts of sustainability. It is better to democratically determine the appropriate individual costs for achieving sustainability because of the respect given to different conceptions of sustainability, the uncertainty surrounding what specific actions are necessary, and the coordination of individual efforts it provides. Therefore,

67 obeying environmental policies that are democratically produced is a minimum contribution of individuals’ for discharging their duty to contribute to achieving sustainability.

It is worth stopping here for a moment in order to clarify what is meant by democratically produced environmental policies. Some may take this to exclude environmental policies made by unelected government officials, such as the administrative rules made by bureaucrats. But, these unelected officials can still be treated as part of a larger democratic system—as would be the case with most employees of the EPA. To exclude the environmental policies created by these officials because of their undemocratic nature depends upon an excessively narrow definition of democracy and should be rejected. Given the complexity of current societies and the environmental problems that they face, it cannot be expected that all details of every environmental policy can be produced through an elected legislative body.

Rather, elected officials should produce authorizing laws that direct the rulemaking of bureaucrats—who are accountable to the people, if only indirectly. Therefore, environmental policies made by all branches and components of democratic governments, such as the U.S., should be treated as democratically produced.

But what sort of contribution to democratic decision-making is required? To understand why obeying environmental policy is sufficient, it will help to review what achieving sustainability requires. Sustainability is a relationship between human societies and the biophysical world in which the sources for that society’s biophysical requirements can persist into the indefinite future. Environmental policy is that policy which seeks to influence the relationship between a society, or its individual members, and the biophysical world. This is not meant to suggest that any and all environmental policies contribute to the task of sustainability.

This merely suggests that environmental policies—insofar as they influence the relationship

68 between a society and the biophysical world and direct the behavior of individuals under that policy’s authority—could be used to achieve sustainability. Therefore, obedience to environmental policies will bring about sustainability to the degree that those policies produce biophysically sustainable relationships between individuals, societies, and the environment. Of course, greater participation in the decision procedures for creating environmental policies is possible than merely obeying the policies that result from those decisions. But the minimum that is necessary to achieve sustainability—to bring about sustainable relationships between the human societies and the biophysical world—is that the policies directed at bringing these relationships about are obeyed. Therefore, the duty of individuals to contribute to achieving sustainability is satisfied by obeying environmental policies—when those policies are directed at achieving sustainability. But, for environmental policies to achieve the goal of sustainability, those policies require the use of some explanation of biophysical relationships of cause and effect because environmental policies cannot be expected to modify the relevant biophysical relationships to achieve sustainability without an explanation of the relevant relationships. For instance, if the biophysical causes of a hole in the ozone are not known, it will not be possible to form policies that effectively address the problematic environmental effect—the ozone hole.

In this section, I have glossed Estlund’s account of normative consent as a source of political authority and have argued that the duty individuals have to contribute to sustainability requires that they agree to obey environmental policies that rely upon scientific knowledge for their biophysical explanations. Though neither that gloss nor argument is sufficient to explain the authority of scientific explanation, they provide necessary steps towards understanding that authority. As I will argue in more detail in the following section, the wrongness of failing to discharge the duty to contribute to sustainability supports the expectation of normative consent.

Recognizing that not all readers will accept normative consent as a source of political authority, I also offer an alternative grounding for scientific authority in the pragmatic liberalism of Gutting

(1999). In Section IV, I present one example of what the recognition of science’s authority means for actual policy-making—specifically policies addressing invasive species.

III. Grounds for Scientific Authority: Normative Consent and Pragmatic

Liberalism

Having briefly outlined the account of political authority based on normative consent and the duty of individuals to contribute to sustainability, we are now ready to specifically address the argument for scientific authority within environmental policy-making, though before doing so it is valuable to spend a moment addressing the assumptions required to support the ability of normative consent to establish authority because accepting these assumptions has significant implications for the use and limits to my argument for scientific authority. In brief, the theory of normative consent expects that individuals would consent to authority if asked and argues that they should consent. What is important to note here is the assumption made about individuals’ judgments and the behavior that follows. Specifically, it is assumed that individuals will act as they should (give their consent) if given the opportunity (consent is asked for). However, it is not the case that all individuals always act as demanded. Therefore, the theory of normative consent must be treated as a form of ideal theorizing—where strict compliance is expected (Rawls 1999,

8).

Of course, part of what makes the assumption of strict compliance defensible is that the principles requiring compliance are determined under favorable conditions (Rawls 1999, 42).

But what are these favorable conditions for understanding science’s role in policy-making? If I

70 am correct to argue in Chapter One that the production of scientific knowledge is related to, but must be distinguished from, the use of that knowledge in our normative analyses, then an important, perhaps the most important, consideration for understanding what role science should have is the conditions under which scientific explanation were made. More specifically, the production of scientific knowledge influences the use of that knowledge at least insofar as it is the results of that knowledge-production that is being considered for use. Thus, what makes the conditions favorable, and supports the expectation for strict compliance, is that the scientific explanations being considered authoritative were produced under ideal conditions. In other words, I have begun my analysis of the use of scientific explanations in environmental policy- making by assuming that the scientific explanations being considered are those that would be produced under ideal circumstances. Specifically, scientific explanations must be produced in a manner that is democratically acceptable if we are to expect those explanations to warrant the authority being discussed here. Nevertheless, I largely put aside questions of knowledge- production in my ideal theorizing because issues with the production of explanations fall outside of the scope of my argument, despite the two issues being closely related As was discussed in

Chapter One, the normative expectations for the production of scientific explanations and their use in policy-making are different and each area of interest requires its own argument. Thus, what I am doing here is leaving aside issues of scientific knowledge-production for future consideration and addressing how that knowledge should be used in policy-making.

At this point some may wonder why this aside was necessary—why it is important to identify my argument as an instance of ideal theorizing. It is important to know that I am presenting an ideal theory because this clarifies the assumptions that I have made and it is valuable to question how close these assumptions match our expectations of current conditions,

71 particularly because one purpose of ideal theorizing is to offer guidance to reform current institutions in order to achieve these ideal goals (Rawls 1999, 215). Therefore, questioning the divide between my idealizing assumptions and current practice will help to illuminate the sort of reforms necessary for the actual use of scientific explanations within policy-making to better reflect the role that those explanations should have. I return to this point in Chapter Four when I address the move from theorizing about abstract scientific explanations to theorizing about the scientific explanations offered by actual individuals.

It will be helpful to review what has been argued thus far in this chapter in order to understand how normative consent grounds the political authority of scientific explanations within environmental policy-making. I began by arguing that individuals’ minimum contribution to achieving the task of sustainability is to obey democratically legitimate environmental policies. In order for those policies to be successful in achieving sustainability, the policy- making process requires some account of the relationship of causes and effects of the biophysical world. If I am correct thus far, in order to satisfy their duty to contribute to achieving sustainability individuals should obey environmental policies that were made with the inclusion of some account of biophysical explanations.

In Section I of this chapter, I argued that the reliability of scientific explanations supports the epistemic authority of science, but that epistemic authority and the relationships of deference that it entails will not prevent the politicization of science and that political authority is required.

This turn from epistemic authority to political authority requires that I reconsider why science should be a source of authority, specifically focusing on political rather than epistemic reasons.

In this section I argue that science is the source of political authority because it is the only biophysical explanation that all citizens can accept for use in political decision-making. More

72 specifically, despite it not currently being the case, scientific knowledge can be produced in a manner that satisfies our democratic expectations—particularly our expectation that political decision-making satisfies the principle of equal respect. Of course, the specific nature of the requirements for satisfying the principle of respect in democratic governance necessarily influences how science should be included. For instance, Durant (2011) argues that Collins’s and

Evans’s (2007) focus on Rawlsian proceduralism produces an expectation for the reform of science focusing on the procedures for decision-making that include scientific expertise whereas

Jasanoff’s (2005) and Wynne’s (1995) Habermasian attention to communication requires the inclusion of science in a manner that is understandable to all within deliberations. Additionally, our understanding of the requirement for democratic governance will influence the particular knowledge that is produced by science. For instance, Kitcher (2001, 2011) argues that the democratic direction of science will influence the sorts of scientific questions asked and researched, whereas Brown (2009) argues that the knowledge resulting from investigating these questions will also be influenced. The reforms necessary to democratize science and the particular knowledge that will be produced once it has been made democratically acceptable need not concern us here. Addressing these issues would bear on the specific characteristics of the ends pursued by a democratic polity through its environmental policy, but does not affect the more general role of any democratically acceptable scientific knowledge within environmental policy-making. All that is necessary for justifying the inclusion of scientific knowledge in democratic policy-making is recognizing that scientific explanation of the relationships of cause and effect of the biophysical world can be created in a way that satisfies the democratic expectation for equal respect of individuals—but as is will be seen below the authority of

73 scientific explanation further requires that no other source of biophysical knowledge can be produced in democratically acceptable way.

Though much has been written about the requirements for democratic scientific knowledge-production and the process for its democratization, the democratization of other knowledge-producing methods has garnered less academic interest. Given this lack of attention, it is not currently clear whether other methods for providing explanation of biophysical relationships of cause and effect could produce democratically acceptable knowledge. Nor is it clear that they could not be democratically produced. But, some conclusions about these possibilities can be drawn from considering the ideals encoded within methods for the production of knowledge of biophysical relationships of cause and effect. Scientific explanations of the cause and effect relationships of the biophysical world are justified for inclusion in policy-making because scientific methods for the production of biophysical explanations are open to plurality of contexts, cultures, and ideals (Harding 2000). So the question to ask here is whether biophysical explanations of cause and effect other than science also encode democratic ideals. The inability of accepting a similar pluralism within other methods, such as knowledge produced through intuition or divine inspiration, makes me skeptical of the possibility for the democratic acceptability of this knowledge. Nevertheless, science being acceptable for inclusion is not the same as being authoritative. Specifically, more than the mere democratic acceptability of the method for knowledge-production is needed to justify treating scientific explanation as commands to be obeyed within environmental policy- making.

The mere facts that science is a source of biophysical explanation that can be justified for inclusion in democratic politics and that biophysical explanation is required in environmental

74 policy-making to achieve sustainability does not explain what makes science an authoritative source of biophysical explanation within democratically produced environmental policy.

However, drawing on the theory of normative consent can demonstrate why scientific explanation is authoritative within environmental policy and not merely preferable. Recall that the theory of normative consent argues that where an individual has passively nonconsented— neither explicitly consented or refused consent—that individual should be taken to be in the same authority situation as if she had consented when it is the case that refusing consent if given the opportunity would be wrong. It is empirically accurate that most individuals in liberal democracies are in a position of passive nonconsent with regards to the use of scientific explanation within policy-making. Therefore, if I expect the theory of normative consent to ground science’s authority in policy-making it must be the case that it would be wrong for individuals to refuse to consent to the use of scientific explanation when participating in making environmental policy should the opportunity be given.

But why is it wrong not to use scientific explanation? Alternatively, why is it wrong to use some other source of biophysical explanation or no biophysical explanation at all? First, it must be recalled that individuals have a duty to contribute to achieving sustainability by obeying environmental policies that are biophysically capable of achieving sustainability. The wrongness to focus on here is the (in)ability of individuals to discharge their duty of sustainability. The more specific question of interest is, therefore, why does not relying upon scientific explanation within environmental policy-making wrongfully hinder the ability of individuals to discharge their duty of sustainability? We can begin to answer this question by recalling that some source of biophysical explanation is required in order for environmental policies to produce a sustainable society. It follows from this requirement that it is wrong to not use a biophysical

75 explanation within policy-making because obeying policies that were made in this way could not discharge an individual’s duty to contribute to sustainability. Further, environmental policy must be democratically produced in order to respect differences between individuals in their understanding of sustainability. Since democratically produced policy is required and scientific explanation is the only explanation that can be justified for inclusion in democratic politics, it follows that environmental policy must rely upon scientific explanation of the cause and effect relationships of the biophysical world if obedience to those policies will discharge one’s duty of contributing to sustainability. Since individuals are wrong to not use scientific explanation when making environmental policy, they should consent to using scientific explanation if given the opportunity. Following the theory of normative consent, it is, therefore, the case that even though most individuals have not had that opportunity, they should still be considered under science’s explanatory authority because a refusal of consent to that authority would be wrong. By returning our consideration to the reliability of scientific explanations, we can see one valuable way in which consenting to the authority of science is connected with the wills of individuals. If we take as a starting premise the claim that, in most cases, individuals intend for the success of major projects that they undertake. And, if we take as a second premise the claim that science is the most reliable source of biophysical explanations currently available. Then it follows that people will consent to the use of science because it would provide the greatest likelihood for success.

While normative consent offers a compelling justification for the authority of scientific explanations within environmental policy-making, I recognize that normative consent is a controversial theory. So, in the interests of argumentative pluralism, it is worth spending a moment to briefly suggest an alternative grounding for the authority of scientific explanation in

76 order to demonstrate that the logic of my theory does not necessarily depend upon accepting the theory of normative consent. The next likely place to turn for such an argument is pragmatism because my focus on the compatibility of scientific explanation with a pluralism of sociopolitical values within politics is closely related to pragmatism’s goal of reconciling the claims of scientific explanations with religious and moral beliefs (James 1907, Lec. I). Dewey’s theory of pragmatism may seem particularly valuable because of the connection he makes between democratic politics and the pragmatist goal of reconciling scientific claims with moral claims (1954). But Dewey forecloses the possibility for liberal democracy in his emphasis on the authority of the scientific method in all aspects of social inquiry. Specifically, satisfying the principle of mutual respect is precluded by his advocacy for the use of scientific, or experimental, method in the social sciences and humanities (1954, 169-73). This consequence of

Dewey’s theory is made particularly clear by considering knowledge of morals, one of the specific fields Dewey identifies as requiring a turn to scientific methods (1954, 171). By requiring moral knowledge to be based on the principles of experimentation and hypothesis testing, as would be required if the scientific method was treated authoritatively in this area of inquiry, Dewey excludes all other sources of moral knowledge. But, it is not initially clear why experimentation and hypothesis testing would provide better knowledge of moral principles.

Whereas the greater reliability of natural scientific explanations produced through experimentation offers good reasons to rely upon these methods of knowledge-production, the lack of a similar reliability in moral knowledge suggests that a similar preference for experimentation is not warranted. Additionally, restricting moral knowledge to the results of experimentation requires acceptance of specific meta-ethical beliefs, such as moral realism. But,

77 requiring specific positions presents problems for liberal democratic policy-making as was discussed in Section I of this chapter.

Gutting’s (1999) more recent work on pragmatic liberalism offers a more promising approach because he argues for the authority of the products of scientific method in explaining biophysical relationships of cause and effect without extending the authority of that method to other domains. Thus, Gutting provides a theory that reconciles scientific facts with religious and moral beliefs—the pragmatists goal—without placing both under one method of inquiry (1999,

Part I, Section 6) Specifically, he argues that scientific explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect are “cognitively privileged simply because they have yielded so much more and so much more precise knowledge of the world than any other inquires” (Gutting 1999, 43).

Importantly unlike Dewey, Gutting extends this cognitive, or epistemic, authority to “very little” of the social sciences because of their lack of predictive success (1999, 173). Additionally,

Gutting connects his pragmatic epistemic project—reconciling scientific biophysical knowledge with religious and moral knowledge—with a liberal ethics open to differences in beliefs (1999,

172). While Gutting’s understanding of the authority of scientific explanations may sound similar to the arguments for scientific authority grounded in truth or reliability that I rejected above, more detailed analysis of Gutting’s argument draws attention to two important differences that make his theory of pragmatic liberalism—with its defense of science’s epistemic authority— a possible candidate for justifying the use of scientific explanations within policy-making.

First, for Gutting the reliability or predictive success of scientific explanations is not based on a particular conception of truth or a specific understanding of the relationship between the biophysical world and knowledge of it. Rather, science’s cognitive authority is grounded in accepting two premises; the fact that scientific explanations have been more successful than

78 other sources of biophysical explanation at predicting and controlling the biophysical world and of mere “humdrum truth” (Gutting 1999, 42-3). By “humdrum” Gutting means the commonplaces about truth or baseline truths that are regularly accepted by most individuals, such as the claims that “we know truths, many truths are about the world, [and] such truths tell us the way the world is” (Gutting 1999, 31). Importantly, Gutting argues that we are not to delve deeper into the philosophical basis of these truths, but rather to accept them on the surface. For instance, we can and should accept the truth of the existence of the biophysical world external to human minds without necessarily accepting metaphysical realism or transcendental idealism

(Gutting 1999, Part I, Section 5). Granting these two premises allows for the possibility to accept the greater reliability of scientific explanations of the biophysical world without requiring the need to also accept the controversial metaphysical presuppositions addressed by Hacking (1999) and discussed in Chapter One.

Second, according to Gutting, the practice of reason-giving provides justification for our beliefs including explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect. More specifically, it is the ability to offer good reasons for holding a belief that justifies having it (Gutting 1999,

15). For instance, I justify my belief in anthropogenic climate change by referring to the Fifth

Assessment Report of the IPCC and specifically the findings of Working Group I (Pachauri et al.

2014). This example may seem to present an instance of the problem addressed in the previous section—of how to determine when deference is warranted to a specific epistemic source—by raising the question of why we should accept the findings of the IPCC in this case. However, it must be noted that reason-giving is a social practice; we give reasons to others who accept or reject them (Gutting 1999, 18). Further, epistemic communities—the community of knowers who we offer justificatory reasons to—already possess rules governing the practices of reason-

79 giving and what constitutes a good reason (Gutting 1999, 22). The problems with identifying a rule to guide when a biophysical explanation is reliable enough to warrant deference and who as possessor of that explanation is owed deference are avoided by understanding justification as social-practices within communities.

More specifically, the currently existing rules that govern practices of offering and accepting the reasons of others for justifying beliefs are sufficient for determining when deference to a scientific knowledge-claim is justified. Grounding the authority of scientific explanations in their reliability does not require the identification and defense of a specific rule(s) for when to defer judgment to scientific explanations. Rather, the justification for science’s epistemic authority is found in the preexisting rules of the community regarding what constitutes good reasons. Thus, we should expect that what constitutes good reasons for deferring in specific cases are already implicitly known by the members of the community within which deference is being demanded. Even though I am not able to tell you what is specifically required to convince me to defer to scientific explanations in all or any policy-making decisions that does not mean that no rules exist for guiding my judgments. Despite the fact I have not offered clear enunciation and defense of what the norms governing good reasons are, we can see the potential application of these norms and the promise of the pragmatic liberal account for grounding the authority of scientific explanations within environmental policy-making by considering a brief example. Consider these two cases; Dr. Smith claims that we should defer to him when seeking explanations for biophysical relationships of cause and effect of atmospheric

CO2 when making policies directed at the addressing the problems presented by climate change because he has spent the last ten years using his doctoral degree in economics to study the costs and benefits of possible policies. Alternatively, Dr. Jones claims that we should defer to her

80 when seeking explanations of the biophysical relationships of cause and effect of atmospheric

CO2 because she has spent the last ten years using her doctoral degree in climatology to study the relationships of cause and effect of CO2 with other compounds found in the atmosphere. Though

I have not offered any specific rules for judging between these two claims, the more direct connection between Dr. Jones’s knowledge and the explanations of interest for this hypothetical policy provides a reason to prefer her expertise over Dr. Smith’s.

Of course, that the closer relationship between Dr. Smith’s knowledge-production and the knowledge needed in this case seems like a good reason to me—a reason that should accepted for why deference is owed to Dr. Smith but not Dr. Jones—does not by itself entail that this reason would necessarily be accepted by the relevant community. But, this example shows that as members of epistemic communities we do already have intuitions about what reasons would be acceptable to us for justifying deference to a scientific expert. More detailed argument for what the norms of good reasons are would certainly be needed if I was relying upon pragmatic liberalism as the sole grounding for the authority of scientific explanations within environmental policy-making, and it may be dissatisfying to some that I have not provided that argument.

However, it must be remembered that the purpose of discussing pragmatic liberalism, here, is only to offer a viable alternative for those who reject normative consent (my preferred account of the authority of science). I believe that I have demonstrated that pragmatic liberalism is a promising alternative, and will leave it to those who reject normative consent to further develop that account.

Having seen that Gutting’s account of science’s epistemic authority avoids the problems of other accounts of epistemic authority discussed in the previous section, the question to be asked now is whether or not Gutting’s account will do the same work within my theory that

81 normative consent does? At its simplest, the theory of normative consent explains why scientific explanation should be used rather than other sources when making environmental policies in a manner that avoids the controversies over requiring any particular metaphysical understanding of the nature of scientific explanations or unjustifiably privileging a certain group as the only possible bearers of that authority, such as “scientific experts”. Gutting’s epistemic authority also provides reason to use science in policy-making that does not privilege either a particular conception of truth or a particular group of individuals as the bearers of scientific authority. By avoiding both of these problems, Gutting’s understanding of scientific explanations can also justify the political authority of science within democratic policy-making. Therefore, Estlund’s theory of normative consent need not be accepted in order to accept my argument for the authority of scientific explanation within environmental policy-making. Nevertheless, normative consent will remain the focus throughout the remainder of my dissertation because it provides a more direct explanation of the political authority of scientific explanations than the pragmatic liberal account that is derived from the prior acceptance of science’s epistemic authority.

Thus far, my discussion of scientific explanation within environmental policy-making has focused on the production of that knowledge and its potential use in achieving sustainability. But it may not initially be clear how using scientific explanation within environmental policy-making is related to promising to obey that biophysical explanation. More specifically, if we are to understand that use of scientific knowledge as authoritative, we must address what it means for science to command and for individuals to promise to obey those commands. Some might think that the duty to promise to obey environmental policies that rely upon scientific explanations of cause and effect collapses into a duty to obey environmental policies that rely upon scientific explanations. However, I argue that the duty to promise to do X does not collapse into duty to do

X because the promisee can refuse the uptake of that which is promised without having prevented the discharge of the duty (Richardson 2011, 314 fn.38). This is to say, my duty to promise is discharged by the act of promising, whether or not the promisee demands my fulfillment of the promise. What’s important here, then, is that there is a moment in between discharging my duty and my actually doing acts where the promisee may exempt me from the requirement at do X. In the context of our discussion, this means that the duty to contribute to sustainability is discharged by promising to obey scientifically informed environmental policies even if the democratic polity that is the promisee does not require actual obedience in a particular case. For instance, some individual might be exempted from obeying a policy requiring restricted water usage because it would result in an unjust economic burden. In the following section, I clarify the relationship between using scientific explanations in policy-making and promising to obey the commands of science. I also elaborate on the nature and limits of science’s authority within environmental policy-making, paying particular attention to how understanding the role of scientific explanation as authoritative commands changes the way policy is made.

IV. Scientific Authority within Environmental Policy-making

What does it mean for environmental policy to include scientific explanation of the cause and effect relationships of the biophysical world as authoritative? More specifically, what does it mean for the commands of science to be obeyed within the policy process, as an authority relationship requires, rather than being merely deferred to? When and how does science’s authority bear on the process of making environmental policies? In this section, I answer these questions by clarifying what it means for scientific explanation of the biophysical world to have authority within environmental policy-making, drawing on the Ecological Society of America’s

(ESA) report on biological invasives (Lodge et al. 2006) to demonstrate the appropriate range and limit to this authority.

Before we can address the particular role of scientific authority within environmental policy-making, it will be helpful to survey the general limits to that authority. I have argued that scientific explanation of cause and effect relationships of the biophysical world are the only source of explanation that can be justified for inclusion within policy-making, thus making it wrong to fail to promise to obey scientific explanations within environmental policy-making. It is important to note that it is only wrong within the policy-making process because of the relationship between successful environmental policy and our duty to contribute to achieving sustainability. To obey the commands of science means that the understanding of biophysical relationships of cause and effect used in policy-making is the understanding commanded by individuals through their use of the discursive power of scientific explanations, and further that scientific explanations are the only ones permitted within policy-making. In other words, explanations of cause and effect relationships of the biophysical world that do not rely upon scientific knowledge are impermissible explanations of the relationships of cause and effect for use within the process of environmental policy-making. This is not to suggest that non-scientific explanations cannot be thought by individuals, but rather that those explanations cannot be used within justifications for environmental policies. How scientific explanations are differentiated from non-scientific ones—the determination of permissible explanations—is the focus of

Chapters Four and Five. Regardless of the source of biophysical explanation that individuals draw on in their private lives, only scientific explanations should be used in the process of environmental policy-making.

Of course, it must be remembered that environmental policy-making relies on sociopolitical values as well as biophysical explanations for our understanding of the environment, its problems, and the possibilities for sustainable solutions. Since sociopolitical values are also required within environmental policy-making and cannot be provided by scientific explanations, the authority of scientific knowledge only encompasses the explanations of the biophysical world. The inability of scientific knowledge to provide evaluative or prescriptive criteria for policy decision-making entails that scientific authority neither cannot nor should not extend to all of the policy-making process, particularly the normative judgments which draw on both our values and explanations. For instance, science can explain the causes and effects of increased greenhouse gas emissions on the global climate, but science cannot tell us whether those increased emissions, or their effects, are good or bad for individuals, societies, the species, or the planet.

Though the explanatory authority of science does not encompass all that is required in the process of policy-making, science’s authority does bear on the entirety of the process. Scientific knowledge is never authoritative when making normative judgments between policy options since sociopolitical values are also required for these judgments. For instance, science cannot dictate a policy for safe levels for pollutants because safety is determined not only by the biophysical effects of exposure but also our value judgments about those effects. However, scientific explanations are a source of discursive authority whenever policy-making relies upon explanations of the cause and effect relationships of the biophysical world. In other words, claims to scientific knowledge command how the biophysical world is understood and, thus, act as a source of political authority whenever biophysical understandings are required within environmental policy-making. We can best understand the authority of science by considering

85 the important role of causal theories within policy-making. “A causal theory is a theory about what causes the problem and what intervention—that is, what policy response to the problem— would alleviate that problem” (Birkland 2001, 161). Biophysical explanations of cause and effect are an important and necessary component of the causal theories of policy-problems just described. Therefore, within environmental policy-making scientific explanations of cause and effect have authority in the development of causal theories. Of course, in complex environmental problems with multiple causes and multiple and uncertain effects of interventions no single causal theory will include a complete account of all biophysical causes and effects. Thus, sociopolitical values remain important for judging between the uses of authoritative scientific causal theories in policymaking.

Science’s partial authority within environmental policy—as biophysical explanatory authority in the development of causal theories—is further clarified by considering two instances within the policy-process in which science’s authority applies; in problem definition, and in policy design. First, an important part of the construction of a policy problem is the telling of a causal story that explains the source of a problem in a widely accepted way (Birkland 2001, 126-

28). Insofar as these causal theories rely upon biophysical explanations of cause and effect, science’s authority requires that the explanations used are drawn from scientific knowledge of the biophysical world. Second, science’s authority also bears on the design and implementation of policies. The causal theory used in designing and implementing a policy provides an account of what interventions will effectively address the problem (Birkland 2001, 161). As is the case in problem definition, scientific explanations are authoritative in that they command what understanding of biophysical relationships are used within the causal story adopted for identifying policy interventions.

Having addressed the authority of science in policy-making broadly in the development of causal stories and more specifically in the policy processes of defining policy problems and policy design and implementation, we can now considered an example of how scientific explanations of relationships of cause and effect should be authoritative within a specific environmental policy problem. In 2006, the Ecological Society of America (ESA) published a report on the current scientific knowledge of biological invasive species and drew on this knowledge to evaluate current U.S. policies addressing the problem of invasives (Lodge et al.

2006). Recent developments in the scientific knowledge of invasives had focused on two areas of the relationships of invasive species and their host environments. First, scientists investigated biophysical explanations of the pathways through which biological invasive species come to be introduced, established, and spread throughout the U.S. Second, scientists developed new techniques and technologies in order to improve the analysis of the risk presented by particular organisms of becoming invasive and requiring management. Drawing from this new scientific knowledge, six policy recommendations were made by Lodge et al. to improve the prevention of the introduction of invasive species, improve the response to new invasions, and to limit the damage of existing invasive species.

Overall, Lodge et al.’s report is a valuable example to consider here because it presents the type of biophysical explanation that is authoritative within policy-making and demonstrates ways in which that authority is both rightly and wrongly deployed in formulating policy recommendations. The inclusion of both scientific explanation of the causes and effects of invasives and recommendations for policies to address this “problem” within the same report provides the opportunity to present a clear differentiation between authoritative scientific knowledge and non-authoritative political recommendations. Additionally, this report is the

87 authorized voice of the entire ESA and, as such, is one of the clearest expressions of the biophysical explanations of science as accepted by the relevant field14.

Though more detailed analysis is required before any claim can be treated authoritatively within policy-making, a general rule for determining the limit of science’s authority is found by asking the question; does the claim being made specifically address biophysical relationships of cause and effect? Any statement that does not in the first instance bear on the relationships of the biophysical world cannot be included within the authority of scientific explanation. There may be some cases that are so uncontroversial in speaking only about relationships of biophysical cause and effect that no greater analysis is needed than the general guideline of whether or not a claim directly addresses biophysical causes and effects. For instance, when applied to Lodge et al.’s report, we should conclude that the definitions of biophysical terms such as “invasive species” should be treated authoritatively as should the analysis of the biophysical pathways through which invasions occur. In both cases the primary claim made is about the cause and effect relationships of the biophysical world. What constitutes an “invasive species” is determined by the biophysical relationships of that species to the environment within which it is found. More specifically, invasive species are those that are widely established outside of their native range due to human influence (Lodge et al. 2006, 2036-7), where the range of a species is clearly a biophysical phenomenon. Nevertheless, in most cases more detailed consideration of the authoritativeness of the command of how to understand the biophysical world, and specifically biophysical relationships of invasiveness, within policy-making will be required. A detailed analysis of Lodge et al. helps demonstrate the need for greater guidance in how claims

14 Of course, it remains to be considered whether the findings of the ESA should be treated as democratically acceptable scientific knowledge and whether Lodge et al. should be treated as the legitimate representative of that knowledge, not just of a professional organization. Unfortunately, addressing either of these questions would require more space than is available here, and thus must be reserved for future investigation.

88 to scientific knowledge is judged as being authoritative, as well presents an example of how the determination of the (non)authority of a claim should be made.

Returning to the specific instances of scientific authority within policy-making discussed above, first consider the role of scientific explanation in defining policy problems. Without a biophysical explanation of what an invasive species is or how they affect their new environment the introduction of novel species could not be understood as a policy problem.

The method for analyzing the risk a species presents of becoming invasive outlined by

Lodge et al. (2006, 2042-45) provides an example of the authority of scientific explanations within the processes of policy design and implementation. Specifically, this analysis would be authoritative in explaining the likely biophysical risk of a specific species or taxa of being invasive in a particular habitat. This authoritative analysis influences the selection of which potential invasives warrant policies to prevent their introduction. However this authoritative risk determination does not extend to the final selection of the species requiring management policies, as Lodge et al. rightly note (2006, 2036). Though Lodge et al.’s quantification of the biophysical risk a particular species presents of being invasive is done in a manner that justifies political authority in the way discussed here; the determination of management policies requires other considerations than solely the biophysical relationships of invasive species to their new environment. For instance, a species considered a low biophysical risk as an invasive may be given a higher priority for management than its biophysical risk warrants because of the particular group(s) expected to be impacted by an invasion and non-biophysical policy concerns, such as for the justice of the policy.

Thus far, I have drawn on the ESA report on invasives to demonstrate instances of science’s authority within environmental policy-making. Nevertheless, the same report is also useful for demonstrating the limits to that authority. Despite Lodge et al.’s claim that these policies “follow logically from recent scientific and technical advances in our understanding of biological invasions,” many of their policy recommendations do not have scientific authority within policy-making (2006, 2036). To begin, it is helpful to recall that science has authority within environmental policy-making only in providing explanations of cause and effect relationships in the biophysical world. Science has no authority over our sociopolitical values or the judgments of policy proposals that rely upon those values, even if those judgments also rely upon biophysical explanations. Thus, the policies proposed by Lodge et al. must be treated as recommendations only, rather than like the authoritative commands their explanations warrant.

As an example, consider recommendation 4; “Make legal authority and emergency funding available for eradication and control to proceed rapidly once a newly established, potentially invasive species is detected…” (Lodge et al. 2006, 2046). Science has authority in determining the biophysical likelihood of a species becoming invasive. However, the conclusion that legal authority should be extended or funding offered relies upon consideration of more than just biophysical explanations. For instance, scientific authority cannot be relied upon as the only justification for distributing limited government funds to an invasive species prevention program rather than a program to reduce air pollution, rather considerations of values are required to defend either policy as more worthy of funding. Therefore science’s authority commands environmental policy-makers on how biophysical causes and effects of invasive species should be understood, but can only recommend actual policies.

In this section, I have demonstrated the nature of scientific authority within environmental policy-making. Though we can now see how scientific explanation matters for the policy process, some doubts may remain about how individuals should be understood to obey the commands of scientific explanation. It will help to recall that authoritative commands are obeyed for reasons independent of the content of the command, whereas a deferential relationship relies upon content dependent reasons for acting as directed. As discussed the Section I, the relevant difference between the two for understanding the effect on an individual’s behavior is largely about the tolerance of those under the “authority” to that authority making erroneous commands—commands to do something that should not actually be done. Consider the possibility that the analysis of the risk of invasiveness developed by Lodge et al., which the authority of science would command is used in environmental policy-making, is flawed in some nontrivial way. Though this error in biophysical explanation may come to light during our production or evaluation of environmental policies, the error should be corrected in the process of scientific knowledge-production and not in the processes of environmental policy-making. It should not be expected that scientific explanations of the biophysical relationships of cause and effect can be produced and used simultaneously, which is why the former occurs in the practices of scientific knowledge-production and the later in policy-making. Thus, the error of science’s command of how to understand the biophysical relationship of cause and effect should be tolerated by environmental policy-makers because of science’s authority and the lack of an alternative that is acceptable for inclusion in democratic politics. Nevertheless, this error should only be tolerated while it is being corrected by a democratized process of scientific knowledge- production.

V. Conclusion

In this chapter, I argued that obeying democratically legitimate environmental policies is the minimum contribution necessary to discharge our duty to achieve sustainability. I then argued that successful environmental policy requires explanation of the cause and effect relationships of the biophysical world. Further, scientifically produced explanations are the only ones currently justifiable for inclusion in policymaking. Since biophysical explanation is required for environmental policies to achieve sustainability and science provides the only source of explanation that can be justified for inclusion within policy-making, it would be wrong not to use scientific explanations of cause and effect relationships. Therefore, if given the opportunity individuals should promise to use scientific explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect within policy-making. I also identified the pragmatic liberalism of Gutting as a promising alternative account of the authority of scientific explanations for those readers who reject normative consent as grounds for authority.

It is important to remember that the inclusion of scientific explanation in policy-making, and thus recognition of scientific authority, depends upon the ability of scientific explanation to be produced in a way that is democratically justifiable. I have largely remained silent about how science should be democratized, which may seem counter-intuitive if my argument for scientific authority depends upon scientific knowledge-production first being democratized. In part, arguments for how to democratize science were avoided to avoid controversial issues not necessary for my argument about science’s authority within environmental policy-making. So long as scientific explanation is produced in a way that satisfies the principle of equal respect, that explanation will be authoritative following my account; this minimal requirement for democratically acceptable scientific knowledge-production suggests that my account of the

92 authoritative role of science within environmental policy-making is compatible with many of the designs for a democratized science.

Nevertheless, it is reasonable to expect that any democratic form of scientific knowledge- making must include critical engagement between those participating in the investigation and the broader public that is affected by that knowledge, particularly when its results command the understanding of biophysical relationships used in environmental policy-making. This engagement should be expected of any democratized science because it is a minimal expectation for satisfying the principle of equal respect. Science’s lack of a general authority in the entire public sphere and the requirement for democratic direction of scientific knowledge-production to justify science’s authoritative inclusion in environmental policy-making leaves space within which this contestation can occur. Thus, my argument is for both a critical engagement with science during the process of knowledge production and an obedience to that knowledge when it is used in environmental policy-making.

Despite the authority of individuals in the use of the discursive power of scinece, not everyone accepts scientific explanations as the most valid account of biophysical relationships of cause and effect—for instance, biblical literalist relies upon the explanations provided in the bible to explain at least some biophysical relationships of cause and effect. Additionally, even those individuals who rely upon science reject particular constraints based on other interests or discursive influences. For instance, an individual’s promethean faith in the ingenuity of human technological innovation in responding to biophysical limits may cause her to doubt the problematic nature of the biophysical relationships collectively referred to as “net energy decline”. If I am correct that scientific biophysical explanations should be used in environmental policy-making and if it is the case that full compliance should not be expected—not everyone

93 accepts the constraints on environmental policy choices resulting from using scientific explanations, I must address of what should be done in these cases where individuals do not accept the authority of science to command the understanding of biophysical relationships used in policy-making.

If science were not merely the biophysical authority within policy-making but a legitimate authority, then the permissibility of the coercive enforcement of science’s commands would follow. As I discussed in the introduction, there are a number of conceptions of legitimacy. Our focus here, though, will be on Estlund’s epistemic proceduralist legitimacy because the congruence between his attention to the role of decision outcomes and the importance of environmental policies achieving sustainability for understanding the role of scientific explanations of relationships of cause and effect; the next chapter will address the question of what would make scientific constraints on environmental policies legitimate.

Chapter 3

The Legitimacy of Scientific Constraint on Environmental Policies

In the previous chapter, I argued that science is a source of political authority because of its contribution to achieving sustainability. It would seem, therefore, that actually achieving sustainability through environmental policies would legitimate science’s contribution to these policies. However, this reliance upon achieving sustainability poses a problem that was discussed briefly in the previous chapter—sustainability is a contested goal that is not only biophysical and cannot easily be identified in advance. Therefore, it would seem that an solely outcome oriented understanding of legitimacy, as was just suggested, would fail to satisfy the requirements of legitimacy for most people

One possible way to address the contested nature of sustainability for understanding the requirements for the legitimacy of science’s influence on environmental policies would be to turn to a purely procedural understanding of legitimacy—where the influence of science upon environmental policy would be legitimate if the procedure through which the biophysical constraints on environmental policies were made was done in a fair manner. However, solely relying upon fairness as the criteria for judging legitimacy would not allow for differentiation between equally fair procedures (Estlund 2008, Ch. 4). The correctness of the outcomes of a procedure provides one method for judging between equally fair procedures. Under this outcome oriented account of legitimacy the authority of science within environmental policy would be legitimate if the procedure of science’s influence on policy-making and the outcome of that authority over policy decisions produced correct outcomes. Outcome oriented accounts of legitimacy require the identification of the correct outcome for a decision, which proves

95 problematic to achieve in pluralist societies where differences in the beliefs of individuals hinder agreement. Procedural accounts resolve the problem of identifying a mutually acceptable right outcome by turning to the fairness of a procedure to justify the legitimacy of the outcome. The importance of achieving sustainability for justifying science’s authority in environmental policy- making suggests that an outcome oriented account of legitimacy may be most appropriate.

However, as was discussed in the previous chapter in more detail, defining sustainability is a political problem of both biophysical explanations and sociopolitical values—and as such is unlikely to be easily defined in a manner acceptable to all. Nevertheless, Estlund’s epistemic proceduralist approach allows for the continued focus on outcomes—achieving sustainability— while not requiring that prior to all decisions being made the correct outcome is known. Rather, correct outcomes in some cases demonstrate the ability of that decision procedure to make correct decisions in other cases.

Thus, for science’s influence over environmental policy-making to be legitimate it must be the case that some outcomes of that influence are correct—that is contribute to achieving sustainability—and that all reasonable people would agree to this correctness. Additionally, the correctness of science’s influence in cases where agreement over the correct outcome is missing must be extrapolated from the earlier identified correct decisions. In section I, I provide a more detailed account of the requirements for legitimacy and how these requirements can be applied to the case of scientific influence on environmental policy-making. Then, in Sections II and III, I defend science’s ability to satisfy these requirements. More specifically, in Section II I argue that science’s constraint on environmental policies produces correct outcomes in cases that avoid ecological collapse. Then in Section III, I argue that the correctness of decisions that avoid ecological collapse can be provisionally extrapolated to expect a similar correctness in other

96 decisions directed at achieving sustainability. I conclude in Section IV by addressing the need to turn from the current focus on the discursive power of science and return to consideration of actual individuals to fully understand the use of that power as a legitimate authority.

I. Science, Environmental Policy, and the Avoidance of Ecological Collapse

Rather than focusing on determining the positive goal of sustainability, which is unlikely to have a definition that is agreed to by all within pluralist societies, the avoidance of the negative outcome of ecological collapse provides a more likely source of agreement because of its greater reliance upon biophysical determinants rather than the strongly sociopolitical determinants of the defining a sustainable society. Specifically, when ecological collapse is understood as a drastic reduction in the carrying capacity of an ecosystem for all species within it, the ability to come to agreement over when collapse has been avoided is likely. Additionally, the consequences of ecological collapse have been identified as contributors to other outcomes where agreement over their ‘badness’ is likely. For instance, environmental scarcity has previously been identified as a source of famine (Sen 1999), as well as sociopolitical conflict or war (Homer-Dixon 1991).

Nevertheless, some may be concerned with the turn from consideration of the role of science for achieving the desirable outcome of sustainability to a narrower focus on the negative outcome of merely avoiding ecological collapse. In other words, it may seem concerning that the source of the authority of scientific explanation is its contribution to achieving sustainability— that is, the justification for why we should use scientific explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect and, resultantly, also accept the constraints placed on environmental policy choices by the use of scientific explanations are justified by only referring to the avoidance of the

97 worst possible outcomes. However, it is important to note that this turn to avoidance of a worst- case or negative outcome is only temporary. As will be discussed in more detail in the next section, the inability to identify an external standard of correctness for the achievement of sustainability prevents that standard from being used as a direct measure of science’s legitimacy, but that the correctness of science’s influence for achieving sustainability can be extrapolated from its correctness in the avoidance of ecological collapse is, nevertheless, important for justifying the legitimacy of science’s influence.

Estlund’s theory of epistemic proceduralism, and more specifically his discussion of the avoidance of primary bads as the source of legitimacy will help to clarify how science’s contribution to the avoidance of ecological collapse justifies the legitimacy of this influence. The primary bads are a list of bad that it is expected that all reasonable individuals would agree should be avoided. Given this agreement, the avoidance of these bad outcomes can be used as an external standard for judging the correctness of a decision15. In other words, political decisions that contribute to the avoidance of the primary bads should be considered correct, and, insofar as those decisions produce desired outcomes—avoiding primary bads, these correct decisions are legitimate. However, to avoid controversy over setting external standards of correctness to judge decisions by, the list of primary bads must be small and acceptable to all reasonable16 points of view. The list of primary bads which Estlund provides are; war, famine, economic collapse, political collapse, epidemic, and genocide (2008, 163). While I certainly acknowledge that judging procedures based on the outcomes they produce allows only for ex post identification of

15 See Gaus (2011) for a discussion of the avoidance of primary bads as a more controversial principle of justice than Estlund believes it to be. 16 Estlund prefers “qualified acceptability” as the standard for inclusion, as opposed to the more common “reasonableness”, because of the advantages it has for understanding its self-application (2008, 61). For more discussion of the ability to self-apply the qualified acceptability standard see Copp (2011), Estlund (2010; 2011), and Lister (2010).

98 better and worse procedures, the fact that we do not live isolated from all historic records leads me to conclude that ample evidence is available to judge currently existing decision procedures.

Although these primary bads are used to defend Estlund’s account of epistemic proceduralism, he leaves open the possibility that the actual list developed by an actual democratic society might be different. This is because the list is not intended to represent the most important issues, but rather those issues that are important enough to be agreed upon as useful heuristics for measuring the quality of the procedure for making any decision (Estlund

2008, 162-63). In other words, the epistemic standard for the legitimacy of decision is unlikely to be agreed upon in most cases by all people within a pluralist society. However, agreement can be expected over a few bad outcomes that should be avoided—the primary bads of war, famine, economic collapse, etc. Similarly, agreement over the definition of sustainability and, accordingly, of correct decisions for achieving it should not be expected in pluralist societies.

However, the avoidance of ecological collapse is a necessary condition for achieving sustainability and it can be used as a standard for correct decisions about environmental policies because a definition of what does or does not avoid ecological collapse can be agreed upon.

Therefore, the constraint on environmental policies caused by the use of scientific explanations would be legitimate if it does a better job of contributing to the avoidance of ecological collapse than other sources of biophysical explanation. Nevertheless, these primary bads—including the new bad of ecological collapse—all result from complex relationships between biophysical and sociopolitical factors, an issue I return to below. As a result of this complexity, it should not be expected that science alone can prevent any of these problems. But, as a source of biophysical explanation, science is certainly able to contribute to the avoidance of these problems, as I argue in more detail in the next section.

But what about the many environmental policy decisions influenced by scientific explanation that do not directly bear on the avoidance of ecological collapse? Based upon the ability of scientific influence to contribute to producing environmental policies that avoid environmental collapse, we can inferentially extrapolate this correct influence to other instances of science constraining environmental policies as also being correct. In other words, that science is able to produce verifiably good outcomes in the avoidance of ecological collapses gives us reason to expect an equal correctness in science’s influences on other decisions.

Before explaining in more detail what grounds support this extrapolation, we should briefly consider what these other decisions are and how they would be correct—what it is that is being extrapolated from the avoidance of ecological collapse. Recall from above that achieving sustainability requires much more than merely avoiding ecological collapse. But what else is required of sustainability? For instance, some may argue that specific ecological systems must be preserved, while others may claim only the provision of the services provided by these systems matter. This disagreement in the requirements of sustainability hinders our ability to objectively confirm whether or not science’s influence upon environmental policies does in fact contribute to achieving sustainability, which is why I argued for using the avoidance of environmental collapse as a measure of the correctness of science’s influence. Nevertheless, what really matters more for justifying science’s legitimate authority in environmental policy-making is not the mere avoidance of ecological collapse but rather science’s contribution to achieving sustainability by enabling and constraining environmental policies choices to those which can achieve sustainability. Thus, the question to be asked here is whether or not we can extrapolate from science’s correct influence in avoiding ecological collapse to science’s expected correct influence in achieving sustainability.

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The good performance of science at avoiding ecological collapse leads to expectations that the same procedure will perform as well in other decisions, even when an external standard is unavailable. Drawing this conclusion—that the correctness of science’s influence in some cases leads to the expectation of equal correctness in other cases—requires an “inferential extrapolation.” More specifically, that a decision is made correctly, when the correct answer is not known, can be inferred from the ability of the same decision procedure to yield correct decisions in other known cases—in this way extrapolating from cases where correct outcomes are known to decisions where correct outcomes are not known. This extrapolation should be uncontroversial as it is the basis on which the scientific method is thought to produce correct knowledge—making this formal epistemic model “familiar and above reproach” (Estlund 2008,

171). In short, epistemic proceduralism holds that democratic decision-making is legitimate because correct decisions are made in avoiding externally agreed upon primary bads and, where such a standard is unavailable, an equal correctness is expected to result from the use of the same procedures.

It should be recalled that science’s authority within environmental policy-making is limited to providing explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect, and given this limit to science’s authority the value of turning to Estlund’s epistemic proceduralist theory of legitimacy should now be clear. Specifically, the focus on the avoidance of ecological collapse— a biophysical state of affairs—provides the possibility to justify the legitimacy of science’s influence on environmental policy-making without including consideration of the role of sociopolitical values. Nevertheless, more argument is needed to demonstrate how science’s influence is legitimate following Estlund’s theory. In short, the legitimacy of science’s influence on environmental policies depends on answering positively to the following two questions. First,

101 does science contribute to the avoidance of ecological collapse at a higher rate than other biophysical explanatory constraints on environmental policy choices? Second, can correctness of science’s influence in cases that contribute to avoiding ecological collapse be extrapolated to other instances of science influencing environmental policy? In the following two sections I provide argument for why both questions should be answered affirmatively.

II. Scientific Constraint of Environmental Policy Choices and the Avoidance of Ecological Collapse

If science’s constraint of environmental policy choices is legitimate, it must be the case that those constraints are correct in those cases where an agreed upon standard for correctness is available. More specifically, the legitimacy of science’s influence requires that the range of environmental policy choices determined by the use of scientific explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect are more likely to avoid ecological collapse than environmental policies using other sources of biophysical explanation. But, both ecological collapse and the environmental problems that cause it are complex, influenced by many different biophysical and sociopolitical factors. Therefore, we cannot know if science’s influence alone or its influence combined with other factors is capable of preventing actual ecological collapse. Additionally, the challenge of determining which decisions could or could not have contributed to ecological collapse makes it difficult to empirically confirm the success of science’s influence. These concerns, then, lead us to look to the reliability of science—can its explanations be reasonably expected to be reliable enough to effectively guide policy choices over biophysical considerations?

It may be recalled from the previous chapter that the reliability of scientific explanations of biophysical relationships was rejected as an acceptable justification for scientific authority.

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But, this rejection was based on the reliability of biophysical explanations justifying relationships of deference rather than authority, which does not mean that reliability cannot offer a valuable gauge of the legitimacy of science’s influence. Insofar as correct decisions produced through a fair procedure are legitimate, it follows that more reliable sources for decisions are more likely to produce legitimate decisions or commands. However, simply addressing the reliability of science will not act as a proxy for correctness in policy-making because of the standard of correctness—the avoidance of ecological collapse. On the one hand, when considering simply science’s reliability our focus is on scientific explanations and more specifically the ability of science to provide explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect that accurately predict biophysical phenomena. On the other hand, when considering science’s correctness in policy-making our focus is on environmental policies and more specifically whether science’s constraints on environmental policy choices produce policies that avoid ecological collapse. The specific question being addressed here is not just whether or not scientific explanations are reliable, but whether their reliability is sufficient to justify the constraints they place on environmental policy choices.

Among those who accept the reliability of science, there is debate over whether or not an alternative body of knowledge produced through the scientific method—one that would be equally successful but not entirely the same as currently available—is possible (Hacking 2000).

For instance, is it possible to have an equally reliable knowledge of cell biology that does not include the current conception of mitochondria? As discussed in Chapter Two, this debate over the nature of scientific knowledge results from the metaphysical presuppositions made by individuals—specifically their beliefs about the contingency of science, the degree to which they are nominalists, and the explanations they give for the stability in scientific explanations. It

103 might also be recalled from Chapter Two that these metaphysical presuppositions are impermissible justifications for the role of science within pluralist democracies. Therefore, it may seem as if we have reached an impasse: the reliability of scientific knowledge may allow us to inferentially extrapolate from its correct influence in contributing to avoiding ecological collapse to other cases, but our understanding of that reliability depends upon metaphysical positions that are impermissible as political justifications.

Fortunately, this impasse is avoided by clarifying what exactly is important for understanding science’s influence on environmental policy-making. Specifically, the question addressed here is whether or not the scientific method produces explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect that can justify the legitimacy of the constraint they command on policy-making based on the how biophysical relationship. Importantly, the debate discussed above over the possibility for a body of biophysical explanation as reliable as currently existing scientific knowledge does not consider methods for producing that knowledge other than the scientific method. Rather, the debate revolves around whether or not the scientific method in combination with other sociopolitical factors would produce a different but equally reliable body of biophysical explanations. We see, then, that whether or not some alternative body of scientific knowledge is possible and whether or not that scientific knowledge would be more reliable, or preferable for some other reasons, need not keep us here because these questions do not bear on the possibility of a more reliable source of biophysical explanation than those explanations produced in the manner of currently existing scientific knowledge. Further, addressing these hypothetical bodies of biophysical explanation that are as reliable as existing scientific knowledge returns us to considerations of the acceptable method for producing

104 scientific knowledge rather than considerations of the role of science in environmental policy- making17.

If I am correct in identifying scientific explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect as the most reliable from those explanations currently available, then what does this mean for the correctness of decisions made about choices for environmental policies? My argument for how science’s explanatory reliability bears on the correctness of environmental policies may be clarified by turning to the example of water policy in the High Plains Aquifer.

More specifically, the influence of science on environmental policies regarding the regulation of ground water usage provides an example of the ability of science’s influence on these policies to correctly avoid ecological collapse. In Steward et al.’s (2013) recent study, it was estimated that an 80% reduction in groundwater use is required for that use to approach the recharge rate for the

High Plains Aquifer of Kansas. Further, if an 80% reduction in use is achieved, this use level is expected to support only 12% of current cattle production. More importantly, even if less water demanding agricultural practices and consumption patterns were adopted, the reduced availability of the High Plains Aquifer for any irrigated agriculture will impact U.S. agricultural production, and thus the possibility for avoiding ecological collapse because of the unavoidable link between food production and the biophysical environment in which it is produced.

The above account of the biophysical relationships between the High Plains Aquifer and its sociopolitical uses does not by itself demonstrate the correctness of science’s influence on environmental policies—remembering that correctness requires constraining environmental policies in a manner that contributes to avoiding ecological collapse and not just providing

17 For a more detailed argument for separating question of scientific knowledge-production from the use of that knowledge in environmental policy-making see chapter 1.

105 reliable biophysical explanation. The correctness of science’s influence is seen in the political awareness of the issue water use of the High Plains Aquifer by National, State, and local community members. Prior to studies like Steward et al.’s. it was always assumed that the water would be there—an assumption which would lead to ecological collapse (Charles 2014). Now, however, some communities have begun to voluntarily regulate their own water use for the purpose of preserving their communities—both socio-politically and biophysically. And what began as voluntary agreements have been formalized by the Kansas state government and are monitored and enforced by government officials (Charles 2014). The influence of scientific explanation in opening up the possibility for water policies directed at preserving the High Plains

Aquifer, and to a lesser degree avoiding ecological collapse, demonstrates the correctness of science’s influence over environmental policy, at least insofar as the choices of environmental polices resulting from the use of scientific explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect included polices that would avoid ecological collapse. More specifically, science’s influence on water policies in the High Plains Aquifer’s region is correct because it made the possibility of policies to regulate the aquifer—and accordingly avoid ecological collapse— conceivable.

That not all counties affected by the decline in the High Plains Aquifer have adopted policies to address this decline may seem problematic for my argument for the correctness of science’s influence because the avoidance of ecological collapse requires not just awareness of a potential problem—aquifer decline—but also the implementation of a policy seeking to address that problem. However, the actual outcome achieved from the implementation of policies or even the actual policies chosen need not keep us here because the correctness of science’s influence— as contributing to the avoidance of primary bads—is seen in the role scientific explanations have

106 in making the decline of the High Plains Aquifer and biophysical methods for addressing that decline conceivable. Other factors outside of the domain of science’s influence also have important effects on the final policies selected and the outcomes of implementation—most noticeably, the sociopolitical values of decision-makers. Nevertheless, it must be recalled that the science provides only biophysical explanations—a necessary but not sufficient element for action—and accordingly the correctness of science’s influence cannot be determined by correct actions. Rather, the mere awareness of the potential problem and the adoptions of policies by some of the political communities affected are sufficient to demonstrate the correctness of science’s influence on environmental policy.

That the set of choices of environmental policies that is produced through the use of scientific explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect has a greater tendency for being correct—that is, policies which avoid the primary bad of ecological collapse—is necessary but not sufficient for the influence of science to be considered legitimate. Though avoiding ecological collapse is certainly important and includes consideration of a wide variety of environmental policies, contributing to achieving sustainability—the source of science’s authority—cannot be included under the umbrella of avoiding ecological collapse. Thus, we must consider how to evaluate science’s influence on these other environmental policies, if the legitimacy of science’s influence should extend to all cases of science’s authority. In other words, can the correctness of science’s influence in cases that contribute to avoiding ecological collapse be extrapolated to other instances of science influencing environmental policy?

III. The Inferential Extrapolation of Science’s Correct Influence to Other Cases

In the previous section, I argued that science’s influence on environmental policies is correct—avoids ecological collapse—more reliably than others. However, not all environmental

107 policies that avoid ecological collapse necessarily contribute to sustainability. So how should the

(il)legitimacy of science’s influence be judged in these cases where an external standard for correctness is not available?

When an agreed upon external standard of correctness is lacking, many have argued for turning to the fairness of the procedure through which the decision was made as the appropriate source of legitimacy (Rawls 2005). In other words, the decision is legitimate because the procedure used to come to that decision was fair rather than because the decision is the correct one to make in that case. However, different procedures may be equally fair, which requires that some other standard be used to differentiate between them. In the case of biophysical influences on achieving sustainability it is the rightness or wrongness of the influence that matters and can provide this criterion. For instance, the continued use of fossil fuels either will or will not contribute to the achievement of sustainability in the biophysical sense of the ability to satisfy the current and future biophysical needs of individuals—this is regardless of whether or not the procedures through which the decision to use fossil fuels or how to use them were fair. Of course, it must be acknowledged that the question being asked here is how to understand the legitimacy of these decisions when the external standard is unknown—in other words, when we do not know whether or not continued fossil fuel use will or will not contribute to achieving the biophysical requirements of sustainability. Fortunately, Estlund offers an alternative to relying solely upon fair procedures for justifying the legitimacy of decisions without a known or agreed upon external standard of correctness in his argument for inferentially extrapolating the correctness of some decisions—those that avoid primary bads—to an expected correctness in other decisions.

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What is most important to note about Estlund’s argument for extrapolating from some (or a few) externally confirmable correct decisions to the correctness of other decisions that lack an external standard is that, despite lacking access to the external standard from which to judge, that the standard nevertheless does exist. In other words, if a decision procedure tends to make right decisions in cases where we know what the correct outcome is, then we should expect a similar tendency to make correct decisions in cases where there is a right answer but we do not know or agree on what that right answer is. However, we cannot infer a similar correctness in cases where there is no external standard18. Therefore, the question that must be answered is whether or not there are correct decisions regarding the constraints placed on environmental policy choices resulting from the biophysical explanation used. In other words, is there an objective external standard of judgment for whether or not biophysical constraints contribute to achieving sustainability? And if there is such a standard, why should we inferentially extrapolate from science’s correct decisions about ecological collapse to an equal tendency to correctness in these cases? More specifically, what is the procedure through which science influences environmental policy choices, and why would the correctness of the outcomes of this procedure in cases of avoiding ecological collapse translate into equal correctness in cases of achieving sustainability?

Some might think that the environmental impact statement mandated by the National

Environmental Policy Act is the procedure through which science influences environmental policies. Though this is certainly one procedure through which scientific explanations exert

18 Thus, Estlund agrees with his critics that procedural fairness must be used to legitimize a decision in cases where there is no objectively correct decision, either known or unknown . But, Estlund disagrees with his critics over how often it is the case that there is no objective standard, rather than merely a lack of knowledge about what that standard is. (Why Estlund thinks most political decisions have external standards for correctness—are determinate—need not keep us here because our focus is on the particular influence of scientific explanations on choices for environmental policies.)

109 power over environmental policies, the discursive power of scientific explanations extends beyond just the design phase of the policy process.

Interestingly, Estlund draws on the example of the scientific method to defend the ability to extrapolate from cases of known correctness to cases of unknown correctness (2008, 170).

This might seem to suggest that extrapolating from science’s correct influence in cases that contribute to avoiding ecological collapse to other instances of science’s influence on environmental policy is uncontroversial, or at least already been defended. However, Estlund’s argument does not apply here because he is concerned with the ability to extrapolate from the correctness of one scientific explanation to other scientific explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect, where here the concern is with inferentially extrapolating the correctness of science’s influence on environmental policy-making. Thus more argument is needed for why the extrapolation of correctness of explanations used in biophysical epistemology to defend the reliability of explanations produced through the scientific method does not apply to the reliability of science’s influence on the democratic epistemology of correct environmental policies?

Preliminarily we might think that questions of science’s influence on environmental policy-making rarely lack an objectively correct answer, whether or not that answer is agreed upon, because particular biophysical relationships can or cannot be sustained into the future. For instance, there are biophysical limits to the ability of Earth ecosystems to act as sinks for anthropogenic wastes. What exactly these limits are for each waste product is not entirely known, even if we do have some knowledge of what these limits are. Nevertheless, the limit still exists and constrains the choices of environmental policies that could achieve sustainability. Moreover, the existence of biophysical relationships of cause and effect prior to our knowledge of them

110 suggests that correct answers do exist for most, if not all, questions about the legitimate biophysical constraints on environmental policies. But, more argument is needed to explain why the correct influence of science on cases avoiding ecological collapse should be extrapolated to the correctness of scientific influence on these other cases. More specifically, it may be wondered what decision procedure is relied upon in determining the constraint on environmental policies produced through the use of the discursive power of science in policy-making, and which procedure would be the focus of this extrapolation.

To begin, it must be remembered that the discursive power of biophysical explanations affects political decision-making by providing understandings of biophysical relationships of cause and effect that enable and constrain policy alternatives rather than through some clear procedure. Because there is no clear procedure that can be identified as the method through which the discursive power of scientific ideas produce correct decisions in cases addressing the avoidance of ecological collapse, it may seem as if there is way to inferentially extrapolate from those cases of science’s correct influence to other cases which lack a known external standard of correctness. However, we can extrapolate from the correct influence individuals have as representatives of scientific biophysical explanations on environmental policies that contribute to the avoidance of ecological collapse. More specifically, as an influence on individuals’ worldviews, individuals represent the discursive power of science in their claims to explain biophysical relationships of cause and effect within environmental policy-making. Further, decisions are made about the acceptability of those representations of the scientific explanations, and that those decisions are correct in the avoidance of ecological collapse gives us reason to expect that the same decision procedures about the acceptability of representations of the discursive power of science will be correct in other cases. But, understanding how science’s

111 authority is represented and how those representations have influence is much more complex than this brief gloss suggests and thus is the focus of the next two chapters.

IV. Conclusion

In this chapter I argued that scientific influence of environmental policy correctly constrains choices in a manner which avoids ecological collapse. That the use of scientific explanations produces correct decisions over the range of possible environmental policies in these cases is ground for accepting that its influence as legitimate. Further, the similarities between the avoidance of ecological collapse and the achievement of sustainability provide reason to expect science’s influence to also be correct over environmental policies seeking to contribute to sustainability. It may be recalled from Chapter One that I argued that the power of scientific explanations as a set of ideas with discursive power needed to be separated from people in order to clarify the particular scope and source of the legitimate authority of the use of science’s power. However, it may have been noticed that when arguing for the ability to extrapolate from ecological collapse avoiding decisions to sustainability achieving decisions I turned from discussion of the discursive power of science to the individuals who draw on that power in their claims to scientific knowledge.

It should be recalled that I argued for a provisional separation of the discursive power of science from people in order to better investigate that power, but it must also be recalled that the purpose of that separation was to allow for a clearer understanding of the ability of individuals to have authority based on their use of scientific explanations. Having clarified the appropriate grounds for the legitimate authority of scientific explanations in this and the previous chapter, I will, in the following two chapters, begin arguing for how this authority should be understood in the practice of policy-making. In doing so, I will necessarily be discussing actual persons—

112 which unavoidably results in the collapsing of the two causal arrows because of the inability of persons to completely distinguish their sources of biophysical explanation from their sources of sociopolitical values.

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Chapter 4

The Representation of Scientific Authority by Individuals

In Chapter One, I argued that we had to abstract from the acts of persons and look directly at the discursive power of scientific knowledge, in order to understand the authoritative role of scientific explanation within environmental policy-making. In the previous two chapters,

I argued for the legitimate authority of the discursive power of scientific explanations of cause and effect relationships within the processes of environmental policy-making. In other words, science is a source of discursive authority for individuals. But, can individuals use science in a manner that will make this discursive authority compatible with the requirements of democracy.

In other words, individuals should have authority in their use of scientific explanations, but the communications of individuals are always more than just biophysical explanation. So the question to be addressed here is whether those communications can bear the discursive authority of science while also being compatible with the requirements for democratic acceptability, specifically by satisfying the principle of equal respect.

To begin to understand how science’s discursive power can be used as a source of authority within policy-making, we must address the important differences between biophysical representation and political representation. Humans do not have direct access to, or unmediated knowledge of, biophysical relationships of cause and effect. All knowledge of the biophysical world is mediated by our senses and the knowledge systems used to connect those particular experiences with our broader experience as individuals and members of communities. Thus, humans only have access to representations of the biophysical world for explaining and understanding sense experience. Political representation, on the other hand, seeks to represent

114 people—their ideas, interests, values, etc.—within political decision-making. To understand how

I am using representation here, it is important to recall that, I argued in Chapters Two and Three that individuals should consent to the discursive power of scientific explanations—to enable and constrain how the biophysical world is understood—as a source of legitimate political authority within environmental policy-making. The reason we should accept the authority of science is that biophysical explanation is a necessary but insufficient condition for discharging some of our humanitarian duties—such as, to contribute to sustainability—and scientific explanation is the only way for us to satisfy the necessary conditions for what we need to do. Therefore, when I am addressing the representation of science as a form of political representation the focus is on the representation of the people by scientific knowledge-claimers, rather than addressing how scientific explanations represent the biophysical world.

As I turn to theorizing about how scientific knowledge-claims are used by individuals to represent scientific authority, it will be important to keep the two different types of assumptions I have made in developing my theory in mind. In Chapter One, I argued that I must begin by abstracting from the practices of persons—with their intermingling of biophysical explanations and sociopolitical values—and address the role of biophysical explanations as such in order to understand the authority scientific explanations should have. This simplifying assumption—of science as a pure form of biophysical explanation—was done in order to provide the foundation from which a more realistic account of science’s authority could be developed. Now, I begin to develop that account by moving from consideration of scientific explanations to the use of claims to those explanations by persons. In Chapter Two, I made a second set of assumptions when explaining why my theory should be treated as an instance of ideal theorizing. Specifically, I assumed strict compliance under favorable conditions. Importantly, the assumptions required of

115 ideal theorizing are not simplifying assumptions in the manner that my abstraction of pure biophysical explanation from sociopolitical values is. Rather, the assumptions made in treating my theorizing as ideal provide the background necessary to offer an account of the ideal role of scientific explanations within policy-making—an ideal that provides a basis for criticism of current practices and guidance for reforms.

But the move away from the simplifying assumption of Chapter One—by addressing actual people—raises the question of whether I must also reject the assumptions required for ideal theorizing? The answer is no: the fact that I am no longer treating biophysical explanation as completely separable from sociopolitical values and independent of persons does not influence the idealizing assumptions that I have made. Regarding my expectation of strict compliance, in my use of normative consent I have assumed that people will act as they should by offering their consent when consent should be given. That scientific explanations no longer represent purely biophysical explanation does not have a direct impact on this assumption about the behavior of individuals—so long as consent is still warranted by my new characterization of scientific explanations that consent can still be assumed to be given. In other words, the assumption of pure biophysical explanation and strict compliance are independent. The former addresses the nature of scientific knowledge whereas the later addresses the expected behavior of individuals in the use of that knowledge. But, changes to the characterization of scientific knowledge may influence whether or not that consent is warranted. So the removal of my simplifying assumption does not necessarily require me to reject an assumption of strict compliance, but it does raise the question of whether or not this more realistic treatment of scientific explanation still warrants that consent. It may seem as if scientific explanations that are not purely biophysical explanations would not warrant authority as argued in the previous chapters and, therefore, I

116 must turn from ideal theorizing. However, drawing this conclusion would be mistaken. The turn to a more realistic understanding of scientific explanation—as composed of both biophysical explanation and sociopolitical values—does not change the facts that some form of biophysical explanation is still required to produce environmental policies, that those policies are necessary to discharge our duty to contribute to sustainability, or that scientific explanations are the only ones that can be democratically produced and therefore agreed upon for use in policy-making19.

Therefore, the argument presented in Chapter 2 for why individuals should consent to scientific explanations will hold even if those explanations are less then purely biophysical explanation. In other words, even when scientific knowledge is treated more realistically it remains the case that the explanations of biophysical relationships provided by science are those that should be used in policy-making, and satisfies the conditions required to remain ideal theory.

But, we do not know what exactly that acceptable knowledge would be since currently available scientific explanations are not produced under the conditions required for them to be considered democratically acceptable, which raises the question of whether my turn from understanding scientific knowledge as purely explanation of biophysical relationships of cause and effect requires me to reject the second half of my idealizing assumptions—the assumption of favorable conditions. It must be acknowledged that reforms made to scientific knowledge- production in order to make it democratically acceptable will likely influence the specific explanations that are produced. Since we cannot know what ideal scientific explanations would be without having actually produced them, it may seem as if discussing the use of actually existing explanations requires moving to non-ideal theorizing because we cannot know how

19 It is important to note that my argument is not that all persons will accept scientific explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect once those explanations have been produced in an acceptable manner. Rather, I am merely arguing that all individuals will accept the use of scientific explanations when making environmental policies—regardless of the biophysical explanations that they privately hold. I return to the particular problem presented by individuals who privately reject scientific explanations in section IV of this chapter.

117 current explanations differ from ideally produced ones. However, we need not reject my assumption of favorable conditions because of the lack of knowledge of what scientific explanations would be produced under those because current scientific knowledge can be used as a proxy for ideally produced knowledge. In other words, current scientific explanations are not different from ideally produced ones in a manner that will lead to drawing different conclusions about how those explanations should be used in policy-making. This is the case because the production of scientific explanations and their use in policy-making are distinct processes and changes to the content of explanations of cause and effect or the production of those explanations will not change the normative expectations for authoritatively use of scientific explanations within policy-making, as was argued in Chapter One.

But, it may be asked, why would the processes of making scientific knowledge-claims and judging those claims not change once the process of knowledge-production has changed?

The reason the processes of presenting scientific explanations within policy-making would not change is because the thing produced by science under ideal democratically acceptable methods or current non-ideal ones is of the same kind—a form of biophysical explanation. The acceptance of the influence of the sociopolitical of individuals on the production of those explanations does not change the expectations for including biophysical explanation within policy-making because the biophysical explanations and environmental policies are produced independently through different procedures, even if co-productionists are correct in noting the simultaneous nature of these practices and their influence on the results of the other. Of course, if specific biophysical explanations produced under ideal conditions differ from currently accepted explanations this will likely cause specific policies to change. But, that should not be taken to imply that the process for the inclusion of biophysical explanations within policy-making must

118 change. If I am correct that changes to the production of scientific explanations will not change the normative expectations for how those explanations are used in policy-making, then it follows that current scientific knowledge can be used as an adequate proxy for the knowledge that would be produced under favorable conditions

Having clarified why my argument for the authority of scientific explanations within policy-making remains ideal theorizing despite removing my earlier assumption of scientific knowledge as purely biophysical explanation, I now turn to consideration of how those explanations are used by individuals in policy-making. More specifically, in this chapter, I seek to address how scientific discursive power is represented authoritatively by people by answering four questions. First, who can use scientific discursive power within policy-making—or, put simple, who can be considered a possible scientific knowledge-claimer? Second, what requirements are there for an individual to act as a representative of scientific authority? Third, what institutional requirements are there to enable individuals to represent the authority of science within policy-making? Finally, how are scientific explanations represented as an authority while also providing equal respect to those who accept other biophysical explanations?

In order to answer each of these questions, I begin in Section I by evaluating past accounts of the political representation of science and argue that anyone who accepts scientific understanding of biophysical relationships can represent scientific explanations in policy-making. I then draw on

Brown’s (2009) analysis of political representation to develop my own account of how the authority of science can be represented in democratic policy-making. In Section II, I draw on

Mansbridge’s theory of gyroscopic representation (2003) to argue that all citizens are able to represent scientific explanations in a way that satisfies the requirements of political representatives of scientific authority—that is, any person may be authorized and accountable for

119 their representations of scientific explanations. Then, in Section III, I focus on the institutional elements of political representation—participation and deliberation—to demonstrate how claims to represent scientific authority occur within the practices of policy-making. By moving from the power of science as an abstract body of knowledge back to addressing actual people, we start to see the collapse of the two causal arrows of co-production—the determination of political authority and scientific knowledge are co-produced, to some limited degree, in the act of judging scientific knowledge-claimers as representatives. Having argued that any individual who accepts scientific explanations may act as a representative of science’s discursive power in a manner compatible with the elements of political representations, I turn in Section IV to address the resemblance between citizens and their representatives and argue for how science’s authority is compatible with the democratic principle of mutual respect, even for those citizens who are not holders of the scientific discourse.

I. Who Represents Scientific Explanations in Environmental Policy-making?

In order to determine who represents scientific explanations, we must begin by clarifying what it means for a person or persons to represent the discursive authority of science in policy- making. Since I have argued that science should be understood as possessing the discursive power of ideas in shaping how we view the world, it may seem as if turning to a theory of discursive representation, such as that provided by Dryzek and Niemeyer (2008), would be appropriate for addressing how the authority of science is represented by persons within environmental policy-making. However, while Dryzek’s understanding of the role of discourses within democratic politics helped me to elucidate the nature of the power scientific explanation within environmental policy-making, his and Neimeyer’s proposal for using national surveys and the statistical method of factor analyzed Q sorts to identify individuals who are strong

120 representatives of particular discourses cannot be used to identify representatives of science.

They expect that, given carefully constructed questions and answers, the results of respondents will load onto different factors, where each factor can be interpreted as representing a unique discourse. Individuals that load heavily onto a single factor would, therefore, represent strong adherents to that discourse with little influence by other discourses (Dryzek and Niemeyer 2008,

486-87). But, it must be recalled that science—the body of scientific knowledge—is not a discourse because discourses require both a biophysical explanatory and a prescriptive component and science only provides the former. Reliance upon Dryzek’s and Niemeyer’s method, then, proves problematic for identifying representatives of science’s discursive authority because a complete separation of science—as a source of biophysical explanation—from the prescriptive component of the discourse held by the same individual is not possible. As was discussed in more detail in Chapter One with regards co-productionists’ identification of the entangled nature of our biophysical and sociopolitical experience and understandings, individuals cannot communicate biophysical explanations without also expressing some sociopolitical values. Therefore, it is not possible to identify an individual as a representative of science without also accepting her as a representative of the sociopolitical values or prescriptive component of her discourse. This inability to separate biophysical explanation entirely from sociopolitical values in practice is why the separation I made in Chapter One between the power of biophysical explanation and the power of sociopolitical values in policy-making was only provisional: isolating the discursive power of explanations was necessary in order to identify its normatively desirable role and to justify that role. However, for the discursive power that I have argued should be a source of legitimate authority requires that people, and not the abstracted scientific explanations, be included in my considerations as the agents who wield this power.

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But, in turning to consideration of people the complete separation of biophysical explanations from evaluation and prescription is not possible, and, thus, prevents the method proposed by

Dryzek and Niemeyer from being used to identify a representative of science.

Because of her recognition of the inability to completely separate biophysical explanation from sociopolitical meaning-making, Jasanoff’s account of advisory boards (1990) may also seem to offer a promising account of how to identify scientific representatives, which is made particularly clear in her acknowledgement that scientific advisory boards cannot be restricted to only considering technical issues or what would here be considered biophysical explanations

(Jasanoff 1990, 230). Her solution to the problem presented by the inclusion of values in scientific representations is to democratize the selection of experts in order to gain the approval of the people under the authority of those policies for the whole representative—that is, both the biophysical and sociopolitical representations being made by those experts. More specifically,

Jasanoff argues that good “boundary work”—which requires negotiation between scientists and the public over what should be included in representations of scientific explanation—will legitimate scientific advice as sufficiently value-free or at least make the particular values held by scientific knowledge-producers acceptable. In other words, this legitimizing boundary work will make the unavoidable inclusion of values within scientific representations democratically acceptable (Jasanoff 1990, 234-41).

Unfortunately, Jasanoff’s recommendation for greater boundary work does not resolve the problem identified at the beginning of this section—how individuals could represent scientific knowledge as authoritative biophysical explanation—because the consequence of relying upon her account of scientific representation, if scientific explanations are treated authoritatively, would be to make the sociopolitical values that are entangled with those

122 explanations authoritative as well, which is clearly beyond the appropriate authority of science as argued in the previous two chapters. As you will recall, science is only authoritative over biophysical explanations because of the important biophysical contribution science makes towards discharging our duty to contribute to sustainability. The authority of Jasanoff’s scientific representatives, though, would extend beyond biophysical explanations of cause and effect relationships to include the value claims attached to them

On the other hand, the typology of expertise developed by Collins and Evans (2007) provides a promising start for understanding how scientific biophysical explanation can be represented authoritatively while also accepting the presence of unauthoritative sociopolitical values. Collins and Evans are concerned with demarcating types or degrees of expertise rather than separating science from non-science, or, more generally, biophysical explanation from sociopolitical meaning-making. The typology of expertise they provide addresses the many ways in which people can know about the biophysical world. These different ways of knowing— where everyone is expected to have some knowledge of the cause and effect relationships of the biophysical world—suggest the possibility for the range of possible scientific representatives to extend beyond just those with scientific expertise, such as the specialized knowledge held by those with graduate degrees because even those without this specialized knowledge still possess knowledge of biophysical relationships of cause and effect that may warrant authority.

Importantly, Collins and Evans are not presenting a political typology but rather a typology of knowledge held by individuals. As we see in their typology, everyone has

“ubiquitous expertise”—the knowledge and skills required to live within a human society that are learned through socialization and the processes of living within that society (Collins and

Evans 2007, 15-18). In relation to science, the existence of ubiquitous expertise suggests that

123 everyone should be seen to have at least a basic understanding of cause and effect relationships of the biophysical world, and, to the degree that such understanding is applicable to policy- making, anyone should be able to represent science’s authority. On the other hand, only individuals with the necessary and sufficient specialized knowledge have “contributory expertise”—the knowledge necessary to accomplish the expert activity (Collins and Evans 2007,

24-27). Within the range of expertises from ubiquitous to contributory there are a number of mid-range expertises. These middling expertises are important to note because, in the case of scientific representation, they would not necessarily travel with the expected indicators of knowledge of scientific explanations. In other words, these middling expertises matter for understanding the authority of science because the people with these expertises can significantly contribute to environmental policy-making as representatives of scientific authority but fall outside of those with “expertise”—those commonly considered scientists or scientific experts.

For instance, the sheep farmers discussed in Wynne (1992), and previously addressed in Chapter

One, may only have a popular understanding of nuclear science—an understanding scientific explanations of relationships of biophysical cause and effect acquirable from the mass media and other popular books (Collins and Evans 2007, 19-22). But their experience farming in the area provides them with the ability to judge the claims of scientists insofar as those claims relate to the farming practices in their area as technical connoisseurs—able to judge someone else’s exercise of an expertise without possessing the relevant expertise one’s self (Collins and Evans

2007, 57-60). In other words, these sheep farmers lack the expertise necessary to directly contribute to scientific knowledge-production but possess sufficient expertise to judge the use of that knowledge in the particular case of policy decisions to address the Chernobyl fallout in

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Cumbria. From this understanding of the nature of knowledge, we can conclude that any individual is potentially capable of representing science’s authority to some degree.

Some may think that representing science requires more than following the advice that issues from scientific research. However, by recalling that the focus here is the discursive authority of claims to scientific knowledge it can be seen this is not the case because the ability to represent scientific explanations in policy-making is not the same as having the ability to produce scientific explanations. More specifically, the authority of science is found in making claims to scientific knowledge, not in producing that knowledge, and the range of people able to present scientific knowledge-claims is certainly broader than just those who can produce scientific knowledge. Of course, the degree of expertise an individual has certainly affects the authority their claim warrants, as is discussed in more detail in Chapter Five.

But the possibility of anyone representing science does not address concerns about the values that come with those representations, or the political authority that follows from expertise about scientific knowledge within the context of environmental policy-making. Thus, all individuals must be understood as potentially representing scientific authority when participating in policy-making. Of course, the fact that everyone is able to claim to represent scientific authority does not necessarily mean that all claimed representations are actually scientific explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect or that the explanations are of equal value for achieving sustainability through environmental policy. It is important to note that acts of representation result from the acceptance of a claim to represent scientific authority or acceptance of scientific knowledge-claimer as actually representing scientific knowledge20, rather than resulting from a single agreed upon procedure (such as winning an election).

20 The idea of representative claims is largely influenced by Saward (2010), who I will more explicitly address in section 4

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Understanding representatives as successful claimants helps clarify how to judge between supposed representatives of scientific authority as will be addressed in more detail in Chapter

Five. Of course, before guidelines can be offered for how to judge claims to represent scientific authority, we must have a clearer understanding of how these representative claims are made. In other words, when individuals offer scientific explanations of biophysical cause and effect in environmental policy-making they are claiming to represent the legitimate discursive authority of science—as it was described in the previous two chapters—and it is this claim to represent science’s discursive authority that must be judged acceptable. It may be thought that it is the claim by individuals to represent scientific explanations that should be the focus of judgment— that is, determining whether or not the explanation offered by an individual represents an explanation that is provided by the body of scientific knowledge, rather than some other source.

However, to judge the content of the explanation rather than the acceptability of its representation of scientific authority is problematic for two reasons. First, the capacity to judge the content of an explanatory claim as being scientific requires knowledge of content of science that most people lack, as was discussed in this section. Second, and more importantly, determining the acceptability of a claim to the authority of science based on the content of the claim would produce a situation of epistemic authority, which I argued in Chapter Two is insufficient for preventing the politicization of science, rather than the required political authority.

II. The Requirements for Individuals to Act as Political Representation of Scientific Authority within Policy-making

In the last section, I argued that all individuals whose understanding of relationships of cause and effect is directed by scientific explanations are able to represent science’s authority.

However, I also noted two important caveats on the possibility of representing science. First, by

126 drawing on Collins’s and Evans’s typology of expertise, I argued that not all individuals are similar representatives—the representative claim made by a contributory expert will represent a different aspect of science’s authority than that of the ubiquitous expert. Second, the unavoidable sociopolitical values included in representations must be acknowledged and addressed without being made authoritative. Nevertheless, it currently remains unclear how the representation of scientific authority by any individual can be enacted in a democratically acceptable manner. So, rather than merely acknowledging the possibility for representation by anyone, I focus in this section and the following on developing a framework for understanding how scientific knowledge is represented in policy-making. It is necessary to develop this framework in order to resolve the issue of how representations of scientific authority can be democratically acceptable and satisfy the principle of respect despite the muddling of the issue by the inclusion of values.

In Section IV, I argue that representatives of science can satisfy the principle of equal respect— which is required for those representations to be democratically acceptable—despite the inclusion of values within the representative claim and the necessary exclusion of all other biophysical explanations from possible authoritative claims.

To begin understanding how people can be considered politically authoritative in their use of the discursive power of scientific explanations of the biophysical world, we must address what is generally required of representative democracies. Brown identifies five elements of representative democracy: authorization, accountability, participation, deliberation, and resemblance. Importantly, he argues that different political institutions are relied upon to achieve these different elements (2009, ch. 9). In other words, the representation of citizens required for the legitimacy of a democracy is not achieved through one representative institution. Rather, the legitimacy of a representative democracy should be judged by investigating multiple means of

127 representation (Brown 2009, 204-06). We can begin to see why attention to multiple avenues for representation is necessary by making a first distinction between the elements of representative democracy. Specifically, we can divide the individual elements—authorization and accountability—from the institutional elements—participation and deliberation. The individual elements of representative democracy direct attention to the requirements of an act in order for that act to be treated as one of political representation. In other words, what is required for an individual’s use of the discursive power of science to be treated as politically authoritative? The institutional elements, on the other hand, focus on the requirements of a representative democracy to be sufficiently inclusive to be legitimate. In this section, then, I will describe why individual claims to scientific knowledge should be treated as cases of political representation. In

Section III, I will turn to how scientific knowledge-claimers can be treated as political representatives in a manner that is compatible with the institutional requirements of representative democracy21.

In the Chapter Two, our focus was on the reasons why scientific explanation of the biophysical world warranted authority within environmental policy-making. Authority is related to authorization in that authorization focuses attention on the source of the authority, but it does not include consideration of what actions are made permissible by possessing that authority.

Recognizing that scientific explanation should be obeyed within policy-making does not answer the question of how a particular individual is authorized to act as a representative in their use of

21 It may be noted that resemblance was not categorized as either individual or institutional. This is because resemblance possesses elements of both, or acts as a bridge, as will begin to be shown in the more detailed discussion of these elements immediately below, and in considerably more detail in section V where the resemblance in relation to scientific representation is discussed.

128 the discursive authority of science. So what needs consideration here is how a person is authorized in their representative claim.

Accountability is a second dimension of the relationship between those represented and those authorized as their representatives. There are two general ways that democratic citizens hold representatives accountable: principal-agent models where representatives are rewarded and/or punished for their representative acts, or deliberative models where representatives are expected to offer an account of their actions (Brown 2009, 215). Whereas authorization creates a principle-agent relationship of representation—where X cannot represent Y until authorized to do so, accountability addresses the requirements for representation after the representative has been authorized. In other words, authorization is directed at understanding how individuals confer the use of their power onto representatives, whereas accountability is concerned with how the represented retain control of that power after it has been given to representatives to use. Both matter for representative democracy because they identify different relationships that constituents may have with their representatives.

Mansbridge’s theory of gyroscopic representation is a particularly promising account of how the representatives of scientific authority are authorized and accountable. In brief, gyroscopic representatives act based on their own “beliefs and principles” rather than through the direction of others (Mansbridge 2003, 520). Though Mansbridge calls this accountability, this concept may be better understood as self-authorization—since gyroscopic representatives are first accountable to their own understanding of that which they represent the authority for a gyroscopic representative’s actions is derived from her own beliefs. Additionally, gyroscopic representatives are held accountable, through elections or other selection procedures, based on the predictability of their behavior as determined by the values that constituents expect the

129 representative to have (Mansbridge 2003, 520-22). Of course, the predictability of one’s actions based on the values and characteristics one holds is not a direct relationship of accountability.

To understand who is authorized to represent the discursive authority of scientific explanations and how they are authorized, two things must be recalled from above. First, the discursive power of science enables and constrains how biophysical relationships of cause and effect are understood. Further, that power is actually a form of political authority resulting from the normative consent of the people to the use of scientific explanations within environmental policy-making. Therefore, it is the people, the source of science’s political authority, who authorize the use of scientific explanations in policy-making and the constraints on how the world is understood that follow from this use. In other words, the people authorize the use of scientific explanations, rather than other sources of biophysical explanation, when environmental policies are being made. However, identifying the people as the authorizers of the discursive authority of science does not entirely clarify how a specific individual, in a claim to scientific knowledge, should be understood as authorized to represent the political authority of scientific explanations. Fortunately, the theory of gyroscopic representation, and particularly its focus on the role of the beliefs of representatives for explaining the relationship of representatives and their constituents, will help with addressing these issues.

In order to understand how a specific individual is authorized in her claim to scientific knowledge, it is important to distinguish between the biophysical and sociopolitical components of the claim. For instance, when a policy-maker claims that new policies are needed to address the potential impacts of climate change (no matter what new policies are being advocated), that policy-maker is necessarily representing a particular biophysical explanation—a particular explanation of the causes and effects of climate change. Insofar as that biophysical explanation is

130 separable from the sociopolitical values that direct the policy proposal, the explanation and the values incorporated into judgments require their own authorization. Whereas the policy-maker qua prescriptive representative may be authorized by some constituency through an election to speak for those citizens, the policy-maker qua biophysical representative would be authorized by all of the people under the jurisdiction of that policy through their authorization of the use of science as the authoritative source of biophysical explanations. Of course, whether or not a particular individual should be thought authorized to represent the citizens through her use of scientific explanation in any particular case of environmental policy-making is a separate issue; the criteria for making judgments about which claims to represent science’s political authority should be recognized as authoritative will be addressed in detail in the next chapter. But, it is important to recall here that the authority of scientific explanations is political not epistemic, and therefore it is not the content of scientific knowledge-claims, as true or reliable representations of the biophysical world, that is judged by the people when authorizing individual scientific knowledge-claimers.

Nevertheless, consideration of the consequences of these judgments directs our attention to the important ways in which representatives of scientific authority are held accountable by the people. Representatives of science’s political authority are held accountable by being required to demonstrate the acceptability of their authorization to other citizens—the source of their authority if their claims to represent scientific explanation are accepted. For instance, a climatologist may be authorized to represent the scientific explanations of greenhouse gas emissions’ impact on global climate, but the people under the authority of the policy-making body within which that scientific explanation is being represented should expect the climatologist to justify her authorization for that representation. Thus, scientific gyroscopic

131 representatives are accountable to other individuals in the sense that these representatives are expected to offer an account of their authorization. This account might include experiences, credentials, the scientific explanation drawn on, or how that explanation led to the particular conclusion, etc.

Consideration of the example of Wei-Hock (Willie) Soon as a representative of scientific explanations of the cause and effect relationships of climate change may help clarify how representatives of scientific authority act gyroscopically. As a political representative, Soon was authorized by the people of the U.S. in his claims to scientific authority. That the people and not scientists were the authorizing agent explains why, despite repeated criticism of his work (Gillis and Schwartz 2015), other scientists were not able to revoke his authority. Additionally, by treating Soon as a gyroscopic representative it is seen that his authorization did not result from direct judgement of his beliefs—in this case the content of his scientific knowledge-claims—as would be expected of gyroscopic representatives. That Soon’s beliefs were not the focus of judgment further explains why the repeated criticisms of other scientists did not cause the people to revoke his authority. Finally, the recent coverage of the ethical concerns with Soon’s research demonstrates how he is being held accountable as a gyroscopic representative (Gillis and

Schwartz 2015). More specifically, it is these ethical concerns which are making the authority of

Soon’s “scientific” explanations be questioned rather than the explanations themselves.

Additionally, recall that the causal arrows of co-production, as discussed in Chapter 1, must collapse at least to some degree when addressing actual people rather than an abstracted body of scientific knowledge. We can see this collapse in the revocation of Soon’s authority as a representative of scientific explanations. Excluding Soon’s biophysical knowledge claims as a part of authoritative scientific knowledge means they can no longer be considered scientific and

132 can no longer be included in policy-making; thus, we see consequences for the production of both scientific explanation and political order. It is important to note two things about this collapsed co-production situation. First, when the people reject Soon’s claim to political authority, they are also producing scientific explanation insofar as they are identifying the account provided by Soon as not-science. Second, this production of scientific explanation results from consideration of the rhetoric of Soon’s claim rather than the content of that claim— the explanation itself. We thus see how the production of political order—by accepting and rejecting claims to political authority—unavoidably also produces scientific explanations.

As we’ve seen, Mansbridge’s theory of gyroscopic representation explains how an individual may represent the authority of scientific explanation within policy-making, but her theory does not clarify how those same claims to representation satisfy the institutional requirements of representative democracies. In the next section, I turn to Brown to address these requirements which concludes my argument for how the authority of science can be represented by individuals within policy-making.

III. The Institutional Requirements for the Representation of the Authority of Science

In the last two sections, I argued that any individual who accepts scientific explanations for her understanding of biophysical relationships of cause and effect can act as a representative of science within environmental policy-making, to at least some limited degree. In this gyroscopic capacity, individuals are authorized and accountable to other members of the political body in which the policy is being made in the sense of offering account of why they should be taken as acting as a representative and how their conclusions are drawn from scientific explanations. Having seen the ability of representatives of scientific explanations to satisfy the

133 requirements for individual acts of democratic representation, we are left to address how the specific claims to representation are compatible with the institutional requirements for the participation of representatives in a democracy: participation and deliberation.

When discussing participation within representative democracies, Brown prioritizes the balance of the demands of private life with those of political participation. Specifically, he argues that participation should be understood as a republicanism of constant contact rather than merely a liberal episodic participation or a communitarian prioritization of perpetual participation.

Liberal conceptions of participation are rejected because they fail to value the diversity of forms and venues in which representation can and should occur, whereas communitarian conceptions are rejected because their prioritization of political participation over the demands of private life are beyond what should be expected of individuals. Brown further argues that participation is important for calming public unease and that political decisions are more democratic the greater the ways through which participation occurs, which is why opportunities for participation matter for understanding the legitimacy of representative democracies (Brown 2009, 219-24).

Political deliberation is the communicative exchange between individuals for the purpose of making political decisions. More generally, deliberation is a particular manner of participation, and a particularly important one because it is specifically focused on defining the ends and means of policy solutions. Legislatures and policy-making bureaucracies are some of the locations within which deliberation about environmental policies occur, and thus locations of scientific representation and authority. Nevertheless, deliberation must extend beyond the elected elite because, when conducted by all citizens, it helps to create connections between these decision-makers and the citizens more generally. In this way, it can extend representation “over time and through space” (Brown 2009, 227). One example of how these deliberations include but

134 are extended beyond government officials is seen in the public comment hearing of the

Endangered Species Act. Through these comments citizens are included in the rulemaking process and are able to do so as gyroscopic representatives of scientific authority. These extensions are important for joining discrete political decisions and those decision-makers with the broader political community—a connection necessary for the legitimacy of representative governments, particularly for judgments of their resemblance to and by those represented.

To begin to understand how the representation of scientific explanation satisfies these institutional requirements—participation and deliberation, it is useful to remember that scientific authority within environmental policy-making is only to provide biophysical explanations of cause and effect relationships. But, how do individuals’ claims to represent the authority of science within policy-making embody acts of participation within the representative democracy?

Answering this question is important because participation as a representative of science is part of the broader democratic expectation that all citizens should have the opportunity to participate in the determination of the goals and methods of political decisions. Prior to answering the question of how scientific representation can occur in the participations of citizens, we must determine what sort of participation should be open to individuals. Of course, we must remember that providing biophysical explanation is the limit to scientific authority and thus the participation of citizens as representatives of science is authoritative only in cases that bear on biophysical explanation. So how do individuals represent science in their participation?

Recalling that representation of science by an individual should be considered a claim to be offering scientific explanation of the biophysical world, one should see that any way that an individual is able to participate in environmental policy-making is also a way she or he can participate as a claimant to scientific authority. The following examples of how individuals may

135 participate in policy-making as representatives of scientific authority may help clarify this point, though, of course, none of these examples should be taken as authoritative representations of science, rather only as claims to such representation. How to judge the acceptability of claims will be addressed in the following chapter.

First and most directly, a policy-making official may represent scientific explanation when they advocate for a policy. For instance, when Colorado Governor Hickenlooper claimed to have drank a glass of hydraulic fracturing fluid, he was at least in part claiming to represent scientific explanations of the biophysical world, particularly with regards to the biophysical effects of the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing on human health (Wolfgang 2013). More specifically, Hickenlooper was asserting that there are no negative biophysical effects caused by the ingestion of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) fluid, and was further claiming the authority of science in his assertion about the biophysical relationships of cause and effect between humans and fracking fluid. It may not appear as if this is an example of scientific authority, but to conclude that no scientific authority was being claimed in this case requires overlooking the important biophysical relationships of cause and effect that are being communicated through the act of drinking the fluid. The policy question being addressed by Hickenlooper is whether or not regulation of fracking is necessary. Hickenlooper can be understood as claiming that regulation is not required in this case because does not present a threat to the safety of citizens. But, importantly for his political claim to be accepted it must be the case that citizens first accept his scientific explanation of the cause and effect relationships between fracking fluid and human health. In other words, Hickenlooper’s claim to scientific authority—his command for how to understand the biophysical relationship of fracking fluid and human health—may be only a minimal part of the political claim being made about fracking policy, but it is still a part of his

136 broader claim. Second, an advisor to policy-makers may represent the biophysical explanations of science in the advice they offer. For example, Jim Hansen was claiming to represent scientific authority when testifying before Congress that “the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here and is affecting our climate” (as quoted in Pielke Jr 2010, 1). Importantly, representatives of scientific authority may participate in many different ways; these examples demonstrate some of the ways for participation but should not be understood as a complete list of all ways in which representatives can participate.

Though the possibilities for participation are numerous and diverse, inclusion within deliberations is a particularly important form of participation for understanding the authoritative role of representations of scientific explanations. In order to appreciate the importance of deliberation for scientific representation in policy-making, we must first address what topics for deliberation matter for understanding the specific deliberative acts of representatives of science.

When considering the role of deliberation in the environmental policy-making of representative democracies, it must be kept in mind that the authority of science in providing accounts of the cause and effect relationships of the biophysical world does not encompass all matters of concern in deliberations about environmental policies—inside or outside of policy-making institutions.

Specifically, consideration of the sociopolitical determinants of policies is completely outside of the science’s authority. This means that science not have authority over the understandings of sociopolitical values included in policies. In other words, when deliberating over a specific environmental problem or proposed solutions, the authority of science should not be understood as conflicting with the sociopolitical elements of policy-decisions—rather, they are like passengers on a plane, going to the same place, possibly even traveling together, but not influencing each other’s journeys.

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That not everyone accepts scientific explanations within their private lives need not keep us here. In Chapter Three, I argued for the authority of scientific explanations within environmental policy-making. That science’s explanations are authoritative entails that all individuals, regardless of what biophysical explanation they personally accept, should obey the commands of science—which is why the general acceptance or rejection of scientific explanations need concern us here. But, in order to address how the authority of scientific explanation bears on all individuals within environmental policy-making, we must give particular attention to those that do not accept science as the source for their personal account of biophysical relationships of cause and effect for two reasons. First, they present the hardest cases for satisfying the demands of respect while also excluding non-authoritative biophysical explanations, and second, the claims of these individuals test the ability of my theory to prevent authority over biophysical explanations within environmental policies from being given to wrongful claims of representing science. The problem here is how to avoid wrong claims to represent science or judge them accurately as not warranting authority.

IV. Representation, Resemblance, and Respect

Individuals who do not accept scientific explanation present the most difficult cases for justifying scientific authority because the principle of mutual respect requires that these individuals be treated equally within policy-making procedures despite the exclusion of their biophysical explanations. Despite this inequality of influence, I have argued in Chapters Two and Three that scientific knowledge within environmental policy-making can satisfy the requirements for respect. However, demonstrating the ability of the unmediated scientific explanation to satisfy the principle of respect is not sufficient for demonstrating the ability of the representatives of the discursive authority of science to satisfy the same principle—a requirement

138 for the representation of scientific authority to be compatible with democratic policy-making.

My focus here on individuals who do not accept scientific explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect may make it seem as if I have shifted from ideal theorizing to non-ideal. More specifically, the inclusion of these individuals within my theory may seem to conflict with my earlier assumption of strict compliance. But, it does not and my focus remains in ideal theory. The authority of scientific explanations that I have defended is within environmental policy-making, and I have assumed a related compliance in the political use of scientific explanations. In other words, the authoritative use of scientific explanations that I have defended extends only to the public practices of environmental policy-making, not the private beliefs of individuals. Therefore, an individual’s private rejection of scientific explanations, as is the case with the individuals under consideration in this section, has no necessary influence on their ability to comply with my theory of the authority of scientific explanations. For instance, belief in biophysical explanations produced through divine inspiration, which a biblical literalist may accept, is compatible with my account of scientific authority so long as the divinely inspired explanations are not used in making environmental policies. In fact, the purpose of this section is to explain why compliance with scientific authority within policy-making may be expected of biblical literalists despite not accepting scientific biophysical explanations in their private lives.

Before explaining why acceptance of the political authority scientific explanations can be expected from those who privately reject them, it is valuable to briefly explain why I am addressing the issue of private beliefs about biophysical explanations at all. There are two reasons for providing an argument defending the expectation of strict compliance despite conflicting private beliefs. First, by recognizing the existence of diverse private beliefs about biophysical explanation, my theory better reflects the real-world than a theory that assumes a

139 consensus of beliefs. Despite being ideal theory, a more realistic theory is desirable because of the advantages it has for achieving its goals. Recalling that the purpose of ideal theory is to provide the standard for judgment of current institutions and practices and to provide guidance for reforms, starting from a more realistic ideal reduces the reforms needed and makes the identification of those necesarry reforms easier. In other words, ideal theorizing should be as close to current conditions as is possible without compromising the theory in order to avoid unnecessary non-ideal theorizing and political reform. Second, by defending the compatibility of scientific authority with diverse private biophysical beliefs of those under that authority, I demonstrate how the epistemic advantages of using scientific explanations for achieving sustainability are possible without requiring compromising the democratic direction of those policies by excluding individuals who do not accept science from decision-making.

But, why should we expect individuals who privately reject scientific explanations to accept their authoritative use in policy-making? As is explained in more detail immediately below, environmental policies made with democratically acceptable scientific knowledge create a sense of resemblance between the people and the policy produced, even for those who reject scientific biophysical explanations. Understanding how representation of scientific authority conforms to the expectation for resemblance between the source of political power and the use of that power through the enforcement of political decisions within representative politics will explain how claims to represent the authority of science are able to satisfy the principle of mutual respect. In this way, it acts as a bridge between the individual and institutional elements of representative democracy. The concept of resemblance is concerned with the acceptability of representatives as resembling those who are represented as judged by those being represented.

Further, the experience of resemblance between constituents, as individuals or as members of

140 some group within the polity, matters for maintaining the connection between all of those under the authority of a decision and those making the decision (Brown 2009, 228). Rather than resulting from the shared demographic characteristics of representatives and those represented,

Brown sees resemblance as created through the inclusion of social perspectives to deliberations

(2009, 229-30). Resemblance is important for representative government because that government must be judged by those being represented as resembling the represented in an appropriate way in order to be legitimate. In short, resemblance matters in representative governance because we expect that a government that is like us will make decisions similarly to us. What characteristics are necessary for an acceptable resemblance remains open to the determination of the represented—what is required for the representative government to be like the represented must be decided by those being represented.

The ability of representatives of scientific authority to resemble those individuals who do not rely upon scientific explanations for understanding biophysical relationships of cause and effect poses a particularly strong difficulty because it initially may seem as if representatives that rely upon only one source of biophysical explanation would not be able to resemble those individuals who do not accept that source of explanation. But resemblance does not, in fact, require sameness as Brown rightly suggests in his disconnection of resemblance from demographic characteristics; even those who do not accept scientific explanations may be resembled in the authoritative representations of scientific explanation. As is addressed in more detail below, it is the “indispensable aesthetic moment in political representation” which shapes the resemblance between the represented and the representative claimant (Saward 2010, 74). In other words, resemblance is judged aesthetically rather than by some objectively shared biophysical explanation. Judgments of resemblance cannot be based on determinations of the

141 degree of sameness between the represented and the representative because the interconnectedness of the many factors influencing our social perspectives, character, and beliefs prevents us from expecting a similar decision being made even when our representative is similar to us in a few important ways. Rather, these decisions will be similar to but not the same as those of the represented because representatives are not each and every one of their constituents; representatives can only resemble the entirety of the represented. Thus, when we are judging the resemblance of representatives, we are not asking, “is the representative me?” Rather, we are asking, “does the representative resemble me in important ways?”

If this is the case for each person, then the overall impact is that the representative government in total should resemble all of the represented, though no particular representative should be expected to be the same as any particular constituent. In other words, the resemblance of the government to the represented should not be expected to be as an image in a mirror.

Rather, representative governments are like portraits—they will resemble the model but can never fully capture that person or constituency22. The aesthetic character of representations is found in this gap between the represented and the representative. More specifically, it is the representative who constructs or makes the object that she claims to represent since the actual persons being represented can never be completely represented (Saward 2010, 13). But, importantly, the resemblance of that representation is determined by the audience and not the representative.

So how are representatives of scientific explanations, who are authorized by the people as was discussed in Section II of this chapter, determined to acceptably resemble those individuals who do not accept scientific explanations of biophysical cause and effect? In other words, how

22 The idea of representations as paintings or portraits is drawn from Saward (2010).

142 can the portrait be judged by and thought to resemble those persons who do not accept scientific explanations and thus cannot be considered the portrait’s model? As demonstrated by the aesthetic understanding of representations, the existence of a gap between those represented and those claiming to represent them is unavoidable and not necessarily problematic. Returning to consideration of resemblance as portraiture may help to clarify this point. Specifically, it is reasonable to expect that a portrait may be thought to resemble an individual even if one characteristic, such as eye color, is different; resemblance holds so long as other important characteristics are similar.

But, what about those cases where eye color, or a single key feature, is important? More specifically for understanding the representation of science, can these representations resemble those who do not accept scientific explanation even when the biophysical explanation used to make a policy matters? So really the question is whether or not the differences between representatives and their constituents will be so great or over so important an element that it would be unreasonable to expect positive judgments of resemblance. In other words, would a biblical literalist be wrong to believe that her representative does not resemble her when that representative uses scientific biophysical explanation? No, she would not be unreasonable in her judgment of the resemblance of a specific claim perhaps, but our concern should not be with any one representative claim. Rather, our focus should be on the totality of environmental policies because the authority of scientific explanations is represented through a multitude of different claims, made by different people, and representing different aspects of scientific biophysical explanations, all of which in total come to influence the outcome of an environmental policy- decision by providing the necessary explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect.

We should direct our attention to this broader frame of reference because the representative

143 government may resemble the biblical literalist even if her biophysical explanatory claims are excluded. Additionally, it is this iterative process of representative claim-making that produces the respect of scientific political authorities, and this respect both generates feelings of resemblance and is required for the democratic acceptability of the authority of representatives of science.

To understand why respect and resemblance are intertwined, we should begin by more clearly identifying what the problem of respect is for representations of scientific authority. In brief, the principle of equal respect requires the recognition of others as moral equals. Politically, this equal respect is demonstrated by recognizing an equal right to participate in decision-making in more ways than merely sporadic elections (Gutmann 1980, 180-81, 187-88). But, how can scientific explanations be used by individuals in policy-making as the authoritative source of biophysical explanation in a manner that satisfies the principle of respect. It is important to remember that the authority of scientific explanations results from the normative consent of individuals to its use as the source of biophysical explanation. Further, within the scope of science’s authority—biophysical explanations of cause and effect relationships—no other influence on policy-making is permissible because it lacks a similar acceptance. Thus, non- scientific biophysical explanations are impermissible with environmental policy-making and, accordingly, individuals who accept any non-scientific explanation will not be able to participate in policy-making by providing explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect. It may seem as if respecting the equal respect of individuals requires treating them as equals within all aspects of the political process, or that the equal right to participate—which the principle of equal respect requires—is violated by excluding participation through the expression of non- scientific biophysical explanations from the policy-making process. However, I argue

144 immediately below that equal respect is demonstrated through the right to participate in political decision-making, but does not necessarily require that this equality is present through all parts of those decisions. In other words, I argue that scientific authority is compatible with the democratic expectation for equal respect by demonstrating how the representation of this authority excludes the influence of other biophysical explanations without excluding the voices of those individuals who hold those excluded explanations.

A good place to begin this defense of the democratic acceptability of representations of scientific authority is by recalling two points from the earlier discussion. First, Chapters One-

Three argued for understanding the discursive power of science as a source of legitimate authority within environmental policy-making. The fact that scientific explanations of cause and effect are merely ideas with discursive power means that science can only influence the world through the persons that accept it as a system of knowledge to explain biophysical relationships of cause and effect and communicate these explanations to others. Therefore, science cannot actually bear authority in policy-making because only persons have agency to authorize and to be authorized. Second, the inability of science to be an authority in actual policy-making is the reason why our focus in this chapter has been on the scientific knowledge-claims of individuals and to the authority given to those explanations by the people. In other words, the focus of this chapter has been on how the unrealizable authority of scientific explanation can be represented, and thereby made actual by persons in the policy-making process.

In order to understand how authoritative scientific knowledge-claims can satisfy the principle of respect it is important to remember that respect is offered through the inclusion in the act of deciding rather than in the outcome of that decision. In other words, the principle of mutual respect is satisfied by the equal right to participate in the act of making a decision. But

145 what decisions are being made in the case of the representation of scientific authority? If we are to understand how the representations of scientific authority can satisfy the principle of respect, we must focus on the act of judging, rather than on the criteria for judgment. More specifically, I argue in the remainder of this chapter that inclusion within the intersubjective act of judging which representative claims should be accepted as part of the representation of scientific authority provides the opportunity to respect those individuals who do not in fact accept the biophysical claim of science. Regardless of the biophysical explanation accepted by an individual, she is treated as an equal by recognizing her ability to reasonably judge other individuals’ claims to represent the authority of science. More specifically in the case of individuals who do not accept scientific explanations, the principle of equal respect is satisfied by including their judgments of others’ claims to authoritative representation, rather than by accepting their non-scientific and therefore non-authoritative biophysical explanations. Respect is found in sharing in the creation of the authorized, accountable representations of scientific authority used within deliberations and other forms of participation. This act of creation should not be confused with the other elements of representation. It is not the authorization itself or the participation acts of representation that is the ultimate source of the respect in the representation of science. Mutual respect is offered to all in the opportunity to participate as judges of the claims to scientific representation—in holding scientific knowledge-claimers to account— culminating in those representations acting as authoritative explanations of the biophysical world within policy-making. This means, for instance, that the biblical literalist, whose biophysical explanation is excluded from policy-making, is still respected as an equal through the opportunity she has to judge the claims of others to represent scientific authority.

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It may help clarify the general role of judgment of representative claims in creating the authority of science by thinking of the determination of who should be accepted as a representative of scientific authority as a “wicked” problem. Rittel and Webber classified the problems faced by scientists as two kinds, “tame” and “wicked”. A tame problem has an accepted definition, a determinate answer, and lacks controversy in being considered solved.

These problems exist in mathematics and some fields of natural science. A wicked problem, on the other hand, has no agreed on formulation and thus no definitive solution, which is due in part to the fact that the explanation of a wicked problem determines the possible solutions available.

In a pluralist society, it can be expected that multiple interests will be affected by both a wicked problem and the solutions chosen to address it. Further, it can be expected that the effected interests will have different and potentially conflicting ways of understanding the problem that align with their own world view. Thus, the possible solutions to a wicked problem are judged as better or worse by each individual or group in accordance with their values (Rittel and Webber

1973). Judgments of who represents scientific authority should be thought of as a wicked problem because the specific biophysical explanation needed to define a problem or explain a proposed solution is not determinable prior to the policy-process which responds to that problem.

In other words, which scientific representative claim is treated as authoritative affects the way in which the environmental problem and policy are understood, and the understanding of the problem and policy solution affects which representative claim will be judged authoritative.

Importantly, this is not intended to suggest that nonscientific explanations should be included within environmental policy-making; rather we must recognize that science does not speak with a single voice and determining which of these voices are acceptable as representatives of science’s authority matters. Nevertheless, these judgments are not completely unguided. The

147 requirements for how the representation of scientific authority can satisfy the first four elements of representation discussed above (authorization, accountability, participation, and deliberation) provide direction/ideals to be used when considering a particular representative claim.

V. Conclusion

In this chapter, I have argued that the science’s discursive power can be represented by individuals within policy-making in a manner that is acceptable to our democratic expectation for respect. Further, I have argued that the possibility of representing science’s authority should be understood as being available to anyone, to at least the limited degree offered by possessing ubiquitous expertise. This argument for treating all individuals as at least potential representatives of science’s authority may seem problematic because some of the biophysical explanations offered by these “representatives” will not be representations of scientific explanation. Since scientific explanations of the cause and effect relationships of the biophysical world should be treated authoritatively, these non-scientific biophysical explanations should be excluded, let alone treated as potentially within the authoritative claims of science.

How to judge claims to represent scientific authority, in order to avoid this potential problem, is the focus of the next chapter. Specifically, I draw on O’Neill’s account (2006) of the role of rhetoric in judging claims to scientific explanation within policy-making to elaborate on how the account provided by representatives, and discussed here as part of the accountability of representatives, should be judged in order to identify the appropriate claims to authoritative biophysical descriptions. I use examples from the case of policy-making directed at addressing climate change to illustrate the criteria used to judge representative claims. Climate policy was chosen as the source of examples because the attention and contestation over the science of

148 climate change and climate policy provides a sufficiently diverse collection of representative claims to illustrate the diverse possibilities for acts of scientific representation.

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Chapter 5

Judging Claims to Represent the Authority of Science

The last chapter demonstrated the ability of individuals to represent the authority of science in a manner that is compatible with our democratic expectations, but it did not address how to judge the claims of individuals to represent that authority. The ability to judge representative claims in order to determine which should be authoritative is important for two reasons. First, many individuals should be expected to claim to represent the authority of science—rightly or wrongly—because of the important influence a successful claim has upon environmental policy-making. Second, not everyone actually represents the authority of science equally well. Thus, judgment is required to exclude those individuals who are not relying upon science as the source of their biophysical explanations from authoritatively representing scientific explanations. Additionally, judgment is necessary to select the representative of scientific explanations most likely to contribute to the particular policy problem being addressed.

For instance, a climatologist may represent the power of scientific explanations to shape how the world is understood better than a lay-person who also relies upon scientific explanations, at least when addressing biophysical explanations of the cause and effect relationships of climate phenomena.

Since I relied upon the theory of normative consent in Chapter Two to establish the authority of science within environmental policy-making, one may wonder why I have returned to consideration of the judgment of citizens. Normative consent holds that the rightness of consenting to the authority of science explains its authority, rather than the judgment of each individual as to whether they should actually consent or not. However, the judgments being

150 discussed here are not judgments of scientific explanations, their reliability, truth, or authority within policy-making. Rather, in this chapter I am addressing how citizens should judge individual claims to represent the authority of science. The authority of scientific explanations of the cause and effect relationships of the biophysical world is not in question or being judged. The claim to represent that authority is.

It should be recalled that, throughout the discussion thus far, I have presupposed that the scientific knowledge under consideration was produced in a democratically acceptable way.

Without this democratic acceptability, the authority of science within environmental policy- making as the source of biophysical explanation could not be justified. It may seem as if consideration of the typology of expertise presented by Collins and Evans, and used in the last chapter to demonstrate the range of authorization for representatives of science, would be sufficient grounds to judge between representative claims. For instance, individuals with ubiquitous expertise would be authorized in making general claims about biophysical relationships of cause and effect whereas those who hold the appropriate meta-expertise would be authorized to represent more detailed scientific explanations. The authority determined by

Collins’s and Evans’s typology may also seem democratically acceptable because the expertise these individuals possess would be a result of a democratized knowledge production process. It might seem as if an individual is an acceptable representative of scientific explanations that they know because the processes through which those explanations were produced and that person cam to know them was democratically acceptable. Unfortunately, things are not this simple. For instance, authorization is not all that matters for judging between representatives. For instance, which expertise is the most relevant is not always certain nor is it always the case that only one expertise is the appropriate one. In other words, who is the authorized representative in a

151 particular case may be contestable and the representatives may disagree about the appropriate representation of science’s authority. Therefore, we must look beyond the typology of Collins and Evans to understand how to judge between claims of representation.

What is needed is a way to determine which claims to represent science deserve to be treated as authoritative explanations of biophysical relationships without relying upon knowledge of scientific explanations beyond the level of “ubiquitous expertises” because not all who should be included as judges can be expected to have greater knowledge of science than this. Such a method is provided by turning to Rehfeld’s analysis of political representation as decision- making and O’Neill’s account of rhetoric in politics. The theories of Rehfeld and O’Neill are the focus here because they help provide an account of how claims of representation can be judged by any individual solely based on that individual’s ability to reason and not her or his knowledge of scientific explanations. More specifically, I argue in this chapter that all individuals are capable of judging which claims to scientific representation warrant authority based on their assessment of the end to which the claim is aimed at achieving as well as their judgments of the rhetoric of the claim to represent science’s authority.

In Section I, I turn to Rehfeld’s discussion of political representatives as decision-makers, and particularly his focus on the good aimed for by representatives’ decisions, to begin to understand how to judge between claims to represent the authority of science. Specifically, I argue that acceptable representations of science’s authority must have the good of all as the aim of the representative claim. In Section II, I draw on O’Neill’s account of the role of rhetoric in judging the political claims of others to clarify the epistemological and ethical criteria by which the claims to represent scientific authority should be judged. Then in Section III, I apply these criteria for judging representative claims to examples from the case of climate policy. These

152 applications demonstrate the sort of considerations that would be required for determining the acceptability of a particular representative claim, though importantly the final judgments made represent only my own determinations and not binding decisions since the judgment of the entire people, who are being represented by the claim, is required be for a final decision could be made.

I conclude my discussion of each example by drawing attention to the insight into the nature of science’s authority within environmental policy-making that is gleaned from consideration of how judgment of that representative claim would occur.

I. The Importance of the Aim of Representative Claims and How They are Judged

Recognizing that the authority of science is represented gyroscopically is helpful for understanding the characteristics of an individual’s claim to represent scientific authority, but it is an insufficient account of how the authority of science is represented in policy-making because full consideration of the processes of environmental policy-making requires addressing how decisions are made; gyroscopic representation, however, is only concerned with the legitimate power representatives possess rather than its contribution to deciding political questions. What we must consider is not only how any individual may act as a representative of scientific authority but also how environmental policy-makers specifically represent science when making decisions. As Rehfeld rightly points out, political representation is not just about the legitimate use/representation of constituents’ power by their representative; tensions in conceptions of representation arise because of the need for representatives to make decisions and to be understood as not simply the authorized providers of representations of others (2009). Turning to

Rehfeld’s theory, then, will help to clarify the role scientific representatives should have in environmental policy decision-making.

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Focusing on the decision-making ability of representatives, rather than their representativeness, draws attention to three elements of representation—the source of judgment, the responsiveness of representatives to the represented, and the aim of the decision made by the representative (Rehfeld 2009). Focusing on these elements moves focus away from what Rehfeld calls the “location of authority”—who has the right to vote/make a decisions—and asks about how the decision is made. This focus on decision-making helps elucidate how the representatives of scientific authority should act, whereas chapter four clarified only how individuals are able to act as representatives of scientific authority. Understanding how individuals represent the authority of science and how those representatives should act both matter if scientific explanations are to contribute to achieving sustainability in the manner argued in Chapter Two that they should. To begin, we need to clarify what these three elements are and how they bear on decision-making.

The source of judgment is the determiner of the decision being made. It may be that the representative herself judges how she should vote on a particular issue, as would be expected of a gyroscopic representative. Or the representative may rely on some third party for this determination, such as her constituency (Rehfeld 2009, 215). In the case of the representation of scientific authority, the source of judgment is the people because they are the ones being represented as the authorizers of the use of scientific explanation, but, since science lacks the ability to prescribe policies it may be unclear how individuals should judge claims to represent science. Identifying science as the source of judgment, then, simply returns us to the problem presented at the beginning of this chapter: how are representative claims to be judged since it is possible that any representative may act on his or her own judgments of science? Thus, looking

154 to the source of judgment for a representative’s decision will not help clarify the issue being addressed here—how citizens can judge between claims to represent the authority of science.

The second characteristic Rehfeld identifies—responsiveness—also provides little guidance in answering this question. Responsiveness refers to the sensitivity of a decision-maker to the possibility of sanctions or rewards from those they represent (Rehfeld 2009, 215).

Certainly more or less responsiveness to rewards and sanctions may be normatively desirable of representatives, as Rehfeld discusses (2009, 222-24). However, it is unclear that a particular degree of responsiveness should be expected or desired from representatives of scientific authority. If I am correct to identify scientific biophysical explanations as the ultimate source of judgment, and each individual’s own gyroscopic understanding of those explanations as her or his more immediate source of judgment, it is unclear who an individual representative would be responsive to—since they cannot be responsive to science, itself, and as self-authorized gyroscopic representatives we cannot know in a meaningful way how self-responsive a representative. It might be suggested that responsiveness to science is found in the openness of a representative to revisions in scientific explanations as presented by those being represented in this instance—that is, a representative would be responsive in so far as she modifies her representative claim in light of changes to scientific explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect. However, it is unclear how this sort of responsiveness to modifications in explanations would relate to the rewards and punishments that Rehfeld argues a representative is responsive to. More importantly, and as was discussed in Chapter Three, responsiveness to changes in the content of scientific knowledge is a requirement for the democratically acceptable production of scientific knowledge rather than a requirement for the authoritative use of that knowledge within environmental policy-making. Thus, the responsiveness of a representative

155 claim-maker is not useful as an independent criterion for judging a claim to represent scientific authority.

The last characteristic Rehfeld identifies—the aim of a decision—provides more help in determining how to judge scientific authority claims. The aim of a representative’s decision is what good the decision-maker is intending to achieve with the decision. More specifically, is the good of all or the good of some particular part expected as the result of the decision (215)?

Traditionally, this distinction has been understood as asking whether a representative sought the good of the nation or of her constituency. However, this is not the only division that can be made; the aim of representation should be understand as a spectrum rather than as a dichotomous choice between two extremes, which Rehfeld terms “republican” and “pluralist,” respectively

(2009, 222). Specifically, decision-making that has a republican aim aims for the good of the whole, whereas a pluralist decision-maker aims at the good of some part, in the case of representative decision-makers that part is often the constituency being represented.

Recall that scientific authority within policy-making is grounded in the contribution scientific explanations make to the discharging of our duty to achieve sustainability.

Sustainability—a relationship between all human societies and the global biophysical environment—is necessarily a general aim of a decision. Though it need not always have this global connotation, it must always be generally focused or have a republican aim, in the language of Rehfeld. This is the case because sustainability reflects a system-wide relationship rather than a relationship between particular parts, no matter what system is being considered.

For instance, when members of Congress are considering how to achieve sustainability, they are addressing the relationship between US society and the biophysical world because this is the extent/scope of their decisions. A member of Congress could seek global sustainability since this

156 would necessarily include the good of the entire US, but she could not seek the sustainability of her home state Colorado because aiming at the good of Colorado is to aim at only the good of a part of the US, and as a decision-maker for the entire US the authority of science claimed by this

Congresswoman requires the sustainability of aimed for be the good of the entire US. Since sustainability cannot be achieved by aiming for the good of a part at the expense of any other part or the whole, the aim of decisions made with the authority of science must have this republican aim in order contribute to achieving sustainability and therefore to be authoritative.

We thus see that representing the authority of science requires that decision-makers hold a republican aim. This applies to all forms of representative claims—e.g. those of protesters, elected politicians, bureaucratic policy-makers—as will be discussed in the next section. In agreement with Rehfeld’s conclusion about understanding the obligations and duties of representatives more generally (2009, 228-29), what we are seeing for claims to represent science is that context matters for our normative judgments about how scientific representatives should act in these cases, at least insofar as the republican aim of a Colorado State

Representative may not be a republican aim for a US Congresswoman. Thus, the context within which the representative claim is made affects the interpretation of the aim of the claim as republican.

II. Judging the Rhetoric of Claims

Judging the aim of a representative claim is a good first step in determining which claims to the political authority of scientific explanations actually warrant that authority within policy- making. However, merely judging the aim of the claim is insufficient for making this determination because the source of science’s authority—its contribution to achieving sustainability—requires not only a republican aim but also that the representation is actually of a

157 scientific explanation of biophysical cause and effect. In other words, all claims to biophysical representation that have a republican aim are not necessarily scientific explanations and thus do not warrant scientific authority. The most direct manner for judging the acceptability of a claim as being informed by scientific explanation would be to judge the content of the claim; however, this is not possible for most scientific knowledge-claims because of the lack of expertise held by the people and necessary to make these judgments. First, judging the content of representative claims is not possible because we cannot expect the entire public that is subject to the claim to all have equal understanding of the claim’s content (as discussed in more detail in ch.4 sec. I).

Second, the content of a representative claim is an inappropriate location for judgment because the validity of the scientific claim is not what matters for understanding the authority of science within policy-making. More specifically, recall that the authority of science in environmental policy-making is a political rather than epistemic authority, and, as such, this authority is not dependent upon the truth of the explanation of biophysical cause and effect provided. We find, then, that rather than only being directed at providing true explanations of the biophysical world, the claims to represent scientific explanation within policy-making are intended to persuade individuals and motivate policy actions towards achieving sustainability. This is even the case of claims that could be considered “purely” explanatory because the manner through which they are communicated will unavoidably influence the way that the claim is received (Sismondo 2010).

For instance, the claims “The earth may warm by 6C by the end of the 21st century.” and “THE

EARTH MAY WARM BY 6C BY THE END OF THE 21ST CENTURY!” provide the same explanation of biophysical relationships of cause and effect, but the two should be expected to have different effects on the audience based on the different manners of their deliveries. In so far as the goal of representative claims is persuasion, the rhetoric of those claims should be the focus

158 of judgment (O'Neill 1998). Therefore, we must turn to rhetoric in order to understand how scientific explanation can remain authoritative despite muddying the waters with the values of the claim-maker and the emotions of the audience. Of course, I should clarify what is meant by rhetoric. My turn to rhetoric should not be understood as looking merely at the art of persuasion in claims to represent scientific explanation. Rather, I am turning to rhetoric more broadly understood as addressing the reception of communications by an audience.

Before providing an account of the rhetoric to be judged and how it should be judged, I should briefly address the unavoidable role of emotion within rhetoric. Part of persuasion results from speaking to the emotions of the audience, which presents the danger that the audience will get carried away by their emotions rather than make reasoned judgments. For instance, drawing on threats of imminent environmental collapse may enflame individuals to such a degree that they would accept policy-actions based on claims to scientific authority that they would not accept given less impassioned reflection. Or, conversely, downplaying environmental threats may decrease the concern held by citizens over the issue and result in the rejection of policy- actions that they would accept if they had not been lulled by scientific ‘authorities.’ This concern with emotion is unavoidable given my turn to rhetorical analysis for determining which claims to represent scientific explanation should bear science’s authority. However, it need not be fatal to my argument for scientific authority. First, the mere influence of emotion on judgments of claims to representation need not be irrational or even arational. Emotions are open to rational consideration and judgment; it is possible to experience the right emotions in response to a particular situation (O'Neill 2006, ch.10 sec.3). Of course, this does not address the possibility of the public being overrun be emotion, but only shows the acceptability of including emotions within our judgments. Insofar as we are vulnerable to making poor judgments in response to

159 strong feelings of emotion, I agree with O’Neill that is necessary to design institutions to control, if not prevent, such situations from arising (2006, 166). For instance, the presidential veto and judicial review prevents the members of Congress, those representatives most directly accountable to the people, from being carried away by emotional concerns. In short, emotion is an unavoidable part of all human communication, and that may raise difficulties for the authority of science over biophysical explanation. But the institutions in which the authoritative scientific knowledge-claims are made can be designed in a way to ameliorate these concerns.

The second concern noted above—that by turning to rhetoric, we unavoidably include the values of those claim-makers whose claims are judged to represent scientific authority along with their accepted representations of science—actually presents two distinct problems. First is the unwarranted authority given to the value positions of a claim-maker, a problem that I have been seeking to address throughout this dissertation by identifying the authority of scientific explanation that is independent of sociopolitical values. Second, this shift to judging the rhetoric of a speaker—the person claiming to represent the authority of science—would seem to place that authority in a person rather than in science.

The first problem presents a concession that is necessary of any theory of scientific authority because sociopolitical values cannot be entirely removed from biophysical explanations within an actual individual, as was discussed in more detail in Section I of Chapter Four. Thus, some of the authority of science will unavoidably bleed into the sociopolitical values of a representative of scientific biophysical explanatory authority. However, this does not mean that any values will be or should be acceptable in these cases. More specifically, part of the purpose for judging claims to represent scientific explanation is to determine the acceptability of the values of the representative in their representation of scientific explanation. As will be discussed

160 in more detail below, this includes both the influence those values have had on the representation being made and the ethical character of the method through which the claim is made.

Though I draw on O’Neill to explain my turn to rhetoric for judging individual claims to represent scientific authority, the conclusions he draws about what such judgments demonstrate are problematic for my account of the representation of scientific authority within environmental policy-making. O’Neill’s argument for the role of scientists within policy-making, which includes his discussion of the role of rhetoric, seems to reinforce the concern discussed above over placing authority in persons rather than in science. More specifically, he argues that natural scientists can be recognized as representing nature based on their knowledge of nature so long as space is left open for contestation over which knowledge is politically relevant (O'Neill 2006,

181-84). Throughout this dissertation, I have been arguing against this position, and defending an account of discursive political authority that is held by science rather than any particular body of individual(s)—most specifically identifying authority over explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect only in those individuals identified as “scientists” or “experts”.

Recognizing that science—as a body of knowledge—cannot actually have political authority, I demonstrated in Chapter Four how this authority is actually held by any individuals through their use of scientific explanations, not just a chosen group of scientific elite—even if which elite are the correct ones is left open to contestation as O’Neill argues. What my turn to rhetoric, and particularly O’Neill’s account of its role in the inclusion of scientific knowledge in policy- making, does, then, is offer criteria for judging which individuals among those who claim to represent scientific explanations should actually be accepted as currently bearing the political authority of those explanations. But, and importantly unlike O’Neill, this positive judgment of being a scientific authority is open to any individual and is only conferred for a particular

161 representative claim made by that individual. In other words, scientific explanation remains what is authoritative, but it travels between and through persons who acceptably represent science in a particular claim.

Having argued for turning to judgments of rhetoric as a means of identifying acceptable representative claims to scientific authority and addressing some of the likely concerns with this rhetorical turn, I am now able to begin addressing how the rhetoric of a scientific claim-maker would actually be judged. Justification for a rhetorical form of persuasion begins with the conditions of a complex society in which the division of knowledge is equally complex. In other words, it is assumed that no single person is capable of knowing everything. Lacking knowledge with which to judge the persuasiveness of arguments, it is reasonable to pass judgment based on the character of the speaker (O'Neill 2006, ch. 10). In judging the character of the speaker or in the case of scientific authority the scientific knowledge-claim of the speaker, consideration is given to two dimensions—an epistemological dimension and an ethical dimension. According to

O’Neill, the speaker should make reliable judgments and should be trustworthy in her or his claims (2006, 161). It follows from these criteria that claims to represent the authority of scientists are justified by their acceptability on these two dimensions. But, if the possibility for authoritative representations of science should be available to all individuals who accept scientific explanations as I argued in Chapter Four, then more argument will be needed to explain how to extend O’Neill’s framework for judgment to apply to anyone’s claim to represent science, rather than just for judging the claims of scientific experts. Before turning to how to judge specific claims to represent scientific authority, it will be helpful to briefly review what exactly is being judged in these cases. To begin, it must be recalled that representatives of

162 science’s authority are expected to offer accounts for their claim to representation, and it is these accounts and their sources that are judged when determining the acceptability of a claim.

a. Epistemological Grounds for Judgment

O’Neill largely relies upon expertise to distinguish how individual scientific knowledge- claimers should be judged. As I have been arguing throughout this dissertation, though, expertise alone is insufficient for determining the ability of an individual to represent the authority of science within policy-making. This is, of course, not to say that expertise does not matter or should not be considered when making judgments over which claims to accept as scientifically authoritative. As I argue immediately below, the ultimate epistemological criteria for judgment is not merely the degree or amount of expertise held by the individual claiming to represent science, but rather the compatibility between the perceived or expected knowledge of the individual with the authoritative claim which that individual is making.

To understand how claims and claim-makers can be compatible, we must begin by considering the requirements of any claim to be considered a possible representation of scientific explanation of the cause and effect relationships of the biophysical world. Specifically, acceptable claims to scientific authority need not bear any specific mark of authority—a designation that the specific claim is part of the body of scientific explanations, and therefore authoritative. In other words, that scientific explanations of cause and effect relationships of the biophysical world are authoritative within environmental policy-making does not mean that all representations of these claims must be drawn from sources such as scientific journals. As argued in Chapter Four, representatives of scientific authority need not be contributory experts to a scientific field—or who would commonly be referred to as a scientific expert. The lack of a

163 mark of authority to distinguish authoritative representatives from non-authoritative representative claim-makers also extends to the claims themselves. Importantly, the biophysical explanation claimed to be authoritative science need not, in itself, bear a mark of authority, such as being recognized as a finding of the scientific community as demonstrated through peer- reviewed journal publication. Examples of explanations that may be authoritative within policy- making despite their lack of a mark of scientific authority include those provided by local knowledge (Fischer 2000) or citizen science (Irwin 1995).

That having a mark of authority is not needed, either on the person or the claim being made, may seem to suggest that anything is possible so long as the people judge it acceptable.

Further, this may concern some by placing too much faith in the lay-public for understanding and judging scientific explanations. However, this concern over the ability of the public to judge scientific claims is not needed because the final epistemological requirement when judging a particular claim is that the claim is compatible with our expectations of the claim-maker, not the epistemological validity or merit of the claim itself. It is not the truth of the biophysical relationship of cause and effect that individuals judge when considering the epistemological acceptability of a claim to represent scientific authority. Rather, it is the expected or actual epistemological capability of the claimant with regard to the epistemological demand of the claim being made which are of concern.

More specifically, consideration must be given to the compatibility between the claim being made and the knowledge required to defend that claim. As we will see below in consideration of an Indonesian protester, not all representations of science require the same amount of knowledge of scientific explanations or the same degree of specificity. When judging the acceptability of a claim, the question to be asked is “Do I believe this claim-maker has

164 sufficient knowledge or access to sufficient knowledge of scientific explanations of biophysical causes and effects to support the claim they are making?” The compatibility of the claim being made and the possibility for a defense of the claim are the appropriate criteria to consider when making judgments about the acceptability of a claim to represent scientific authority because different representations of science require not only different types of knowledge but also different degrees of knowledge. Turning back to consideration of the typology of expertise developed by Collins and Evans, and addressed in detail in Chapter Four, it should be recalled that different representations of science require different types of scientific expertise. Therefore, when judging the epistemological acceptability of a claim to represent scientific authority, the criteria for accepting a claim are the expected compatibility between the expertise of the claimant and the expertise that would be required to defend the claim being made, rather than merely the absolute degree of expertise that the knowledge-claimer has. For instance, I need not have contributory expertise in the field of climatology to warrant authority when making the scientific knowledge-claim that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission are a significant cause of climate change. However, that contributory expertise may be required for more specific scientific knowledge-claims.

Of course, given the difficulty discussed in the previous chapter regarding the ability to determine the exact knowledge or expertise possessed by an individual, it may be unclear how judgments of epistemological acceptability qua compatibility would actually be made in real cases. The determination of the epistemological compatibility of a claim with the claimant may come from one of two sources: first, the judge of the claim may consider the available knowledge about the claimant and the epistemological demands of defending the particular claim or second, the claimant may answer questions addressed to her or him by others to demonstrate

165 the compatibility. Which of these two sources is relied upon for an answer, of course, depends upon the context of the representative claim. For instance, in Congressional hearings representatives of science can be asked for evidence to support their scientific knowledge-claims.

On the other hand, in the case of protesters those individuals witnessing the protest are unlikely to have a similar opportunity to ask questions of the claim-making protesters. Nevertheless, this question of sufficient and credible knowledge can and should be answered in both cases in order to demonstrate the ability to justify a claim to represent scientific authority and accordingly command the biophysical understanding used in policy-making.

b. Ethical Grounds for Judgment

The ability to judge the epistemological dimensions of the rhetoric scientific knowledge- claims is one aspect of how claims to represent authoritative biophysical explanation are judged without relying upon the ability of all individuals to judge the biophysical explanations.

Nevertheless, these epistemological judgments cannot completely determine which representatives speak for the authority of science. The ethical character of the claim must also be considered because the inequality in knowledge between citizens requires that we have reason to accept the claim being made beyond our epistemic judgments. O’Neill focuses on the trustworthiness of the speaker in elaborating on how to judge the ethical dimension of rhetoric

(2006, ch. 10.2). But, if anyone can represent science, then judging the character of the speaker proves problematic for two reasons. First, it is unlikely that enough could be known about the character of each and every possible representative claim-maker in order to judge his or her trustworthiness. Second, it is not entirely clear what O’Neill means by trustworthiness.

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Fortunately, the character of the person—either his or her trustworthiness or some other ethical characteristic—need not be the focus of judgments in the case of judgments of claims to represent the authority of science. In the case of judgments of scientific representatives, we are only recognizing the authority of a particular claim made by that individual—acknowledging that that specific claim represents scientific explanation and therefore should be treated authoritatively—rather than placing authority in the entire person. Since the individual is not being given authority to set policy or make decisions the overall character of the person is not of great issue. Recognizing that it is the claim and not the entire person that bears authority demonstrates that the person should not be the focus of judgment; rather, judgment should be made about the character of the claim that is made.

But what does it mean to judge the character of the claim since the claim is not a person and it is the person who ultimately will be acting with authority? To judge the character of the claim is to judge the method through which the claim is made because it is through the act of representing scientific authority that a person is making the claim to that authority. Therefore, what we should judge is the ethical acceptability of the manner in which the claim—the presentation of scientific explanation in a manner that is claimed to represent the authority of the people—is presented. More specifically, is the method through which the individual make scientific knowledge-claims ethically concerning? For instance, claims to represent scientific authority that require deception or lying would be ethically suspect and likely not permissible representations of scientific authority. Remembering, of course, that I am offering only guidelines here and that the final determination of the acceptability of any claim, including those that rely upon deceit, must be left to those citizens who fall under the authority of the policy in which the authoritative representation would bear. The possibility of not trusting in the

167 representative claims of an energy expert who works for a major oil company but fails to disclose this connection when claiming the authority of science offers one example of how the character of the claim will influence the judgment of the representativeness of the claim. More specifically, if the connection with the oil company is thought to influence the representation of science being made, and particularly if this connection was intentionally hidden, the ability to trust the claim being made as representing the biophysical explanations of science may come into doubt, even more so if contradictory explanations are also claimed by others to represent science.

The use of cruelty in representing science would also be ethically questionable. For instance, consider the claim to scientific authority presented by the violence of communication exhibited by protestors at the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, US. At least some protestors were particularly focused on the relationships between trade and the environment—specifically claiming that WTO policies fail to satisfy their requirement to conserve natural resources ("The World Trade Organization's Threat to the Environment" undated flyer). Though the flyer just referenced is not a violent method for claiming scientific authority, its presence at the protest suggests that other more violent protestors may have been making similar claims to the authority of science in explaining the biophysical relationships between trade and the environment. In other words, it is possible that at least some of the more violent protesters were also claiming to represent scientific explanations—though through a less explicit method—which raises the question of whether those violent protesters should be accepted as scientific authorities. The reason this example is brought up is not to defend a particular account of the ethically acceptable use of violence, which would certainly move us far afield of our present concern with how claims to represent scientific authority within policy- making over biophysical explanations are judged. Rather, the reason for considering the use of

168 violence is merely to demonstrate the range of possible considerations when judging the ethical character of claims to represent science.

III. Provisional Judgments of Representative Claims—the Case of Climate Policy

In the previous two sections, I have argued that the acceptability of a claim to represent scientific authority within environmental policy-making should be judged by the good the claim aims at and the rhetoric of the claim. In defending that position, I have offered preliminary suggestions of how such judgments would occur. But a more detailed consideration of the representation of scientific authority within climate policy-making will help further clarify how the representation of science’s authority is open to anyone, and how claims to be a representative can be judged. I draw on claims to represent scientific authority within the case of climate policy for two reasons. First, climate change is a widely known and publicized environmental issue, which offers a broad number of examples of claims to represent science to draw from in this application. Second, at least some of the contestation within the process of making climate policy has specifically addressed the authority of claims to scientific explanation. These disagreements present particularly valuable cases for demonstrating which claims are more or less justifiable as representations of scientific authority.

At the outset, it is important to be clear that this section is not intended to demonstrate that any particular claim to represent scientific authority in fact exemplifies what such a claim would look like. Rather, my aim is to explore how the acceptability of a representation would likely be discussed by those responsible for judging a representative claim. In part, objective conclusions cannot be reached because the appropriate body for making judgments of which scientific knowledge-claim should be treated authoritatively is the democratic polity that fall

169 under the authority of the policy being made, and not any single person—including the author.

These examples also lack clear conclusions because the real-world does not perfectly reflect theory. What we learn from these applications is what deliberations should be had over the claim to scientific authority and what conversations should not be had. In other words, we see from these examples what questions need to be asked and answered before the political authority of science is given to a scientific knowledge-claimer. Finally, though I recognize that my determination of the warrant of authority is not binding, I will nonetheless join the conversation by suggesting how I believe these decisions should be made to help clarify what is at stake and how these discussions will occur. I begin each example by providing a brief summary of the context of scientific knowledge-claim. I then consider the three criteria for judgment discussed above—the aim of the claim, its epistemological defensibility and compatibility, and ethical character of the claim and the method through which it is made. When considering these criteria

I identify both areas which are unclear and would warrant careful considerations as well as those areas which I argue do not require deeper consideration. After presenting the sort of conversation that I expect to occur when considering each claim to representation, I conclude by presenting a summary of what is learned from each example about the practices of judging claims as well as what is learned about the character of the authority of science within policy-making more generally.

a. The Third National Climate Assessment

The Third National Climate Assessment (3rd NCA) is a report synthesizing the findings of the US Global Change Research Program that assesses the effects of global change on the natural and human environments of the US at both national and sub-national levels. This report includes the findings of numerous scientists and is reviewed both by scientific peers and the

170 public. The report itself may seem like an example of a scientific authority within US policy- making because of its production process—specifically the report may appear authoritative because it was written by scientific experts who were authorized and accountable to both other scientists and the public. However, to judge the political authority of the 3rd NCA—the authority of the 3rd NCA as source of biophysical explanation in policy-making, we must turn to claims such as those made by the Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd D. Stern.

Stern's speech, rather than the 3rd NCA, is our focus here because it is Stern’s claim that represents the authority of the 3rd NCA within the political sphere. While the 3rd NCA represents a scientific explanation of cause and effect relationships, it does not represent science’s authority within policy-making. More specifically, claims by individuals to represent the explanations of the report are necessary to bring that report from the realm of scientific knowledge-production into the realm of policy-making. In other words, the 3rd NCA is an example of scientific explanation of the cause and effect relationships of climate change, but it is only through the claims of individuals to represent the authority of science which makes the explanations of the

3rd NCA politically meaningful. Though the majority of Stern’s speech to the audience at Yale focuses on US climate policy, particularly past successes and the strategies and prospects for future international agreement, he claims to represent the scientific authority of the 3rd NCA during his discussion of the accomplishments of the Obama Administration’s second term:

In a steady drumbeat of second term actions and events, the Administration has, to give just a few examples, issued a landmark proposed rule that will cut emissions of existing U.S. power plants 30% by 2030 and another proposed rule to require new power plants to meet rigorous emissions standards; moved at a rapid pace to issue tough efficiency standards for the equipment and appliances that make buildings run; announced the planned extension of heavy duty vehicle standards beyond 2018; announced a broad strategy to reduce the emissions of methane, our second leading greenhouse gas; issued a proposed rule on HFCs – industrial gases with intense global warming potential; and issued the National Climate Assessment on climate impacts at home, showing that

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climate change is already affecting every region of the country and every sector of our economy (Stern 2014, emphasis added)

It is this statement by Stern, rather than the 3rd NCA report itself, that claims the authority within

US climate policy-making of the 3rd NCA as scientific explanation of the biophysical relationships of climate change23. However, the fact that the State Department believes the 3rd

NCA should bear the authority of science within policy-making does not mean that it necessarily should, and it is the rhetoric of Stern’s claim to representation which should be our focus for judgment.

Now that we have seen how Stern claims to represent scientific authority politically within US policy-making, we can see how some may question the aim and epistemological character of Stern’s claim, though I will suggest that the concern over the acceptability of Stern’s aim is unwarranted. Recalling that Stern’s claim to the authority of science of the 3rd NCA must have a republic aim—or an aim at the good of all, the question may be asked of whether or not

Stern’s aim is in fact directed at the good of all. Climate change is a global phenomenon, but the

3rd NCA is explicitly directed at only explaining the biophysical relationships of cause and effect within the US. Thus, it may seem as if the 3rd NCA is aimed at the good of a part—the US—and

23 Of course, it should be remembered that the authority of science within policy-making presupposes that the authoritative scientific explanation has been produced in a democratically acceptable manner. Though the 3rd NCA is not an example of democratically acceptable science, it is useful as a proxy for the purpose of investigating how that knowledge would be represented authoritatively within policy-making. However, the lack of democratic acceptability in the production of the 3rd NCA raises an interesting question about Stern’s representative claim. Specifically, it is unclear how necessary the representative claims to the permissible inclusion within policy-making of specific scientific explanations such as Stern’s will be for justifying the authority of scientific explanation once that explanation has resulted from a democratically acceptable manner. Under an ideal democratic process, it may be the case that all scientific knowledge produced will be in agreement and present a complete agreement between all explanation of biophysical cause and effect. However, this seems unlikely because even if all knowledge fit into this perfect picture of the biophysical world, there would still be competing claims about which explanations are the relevant ones—and thus authoritative—for a particular policy problem. Therefore, even with democratically acceptable science, some representative claim will be necessary to identify what scientific explanation should be treated as authoritative within the making of a specific policy. In other words, a representative claim that requires judgment is necessary in order to take scientific explanation out of the realm of knowledge-production and use that explanation authoritatively within the realm of policy-making.

172 not the good of the whole—the earth. While this aim seems to bring doubt to the acceptability of

Stern’s claim to scientific authority, it must be noted that Stern made his claim at Yale

University—within the US—and claimed the authority of the 3rd NCA within US climate policy actions. Therefore, in this case, we should understand the whole whose good must be aimed at as the US and not the earth, even though the biophysical relationships being considered have influence beyond the US. This is the case because the explanations offered by the 3rd NCA are about biophysical relationships of cause and effect as they apply to the U.S. In other words, both

Stern’s aim and the authority he is claiming are directed at the US—making his aim republican and thus acceptable.

The epistemological nature of Stern’s claim is less uncertain, and unlikely to require much consideration by judges. Regarding the epistemological dimension of Stern’s claim, we must ask whether we expect him to have sufficient knowledge to defend the claim that he is making—that the 3rd NCA is the scientific explanation of the cause and effect relationships that should be used, when applicable, within US climate policy? Insofar as Stern is the US Special

Envoy for Climate Change, it should be expected that he is capable of defending the epistemological bases of the 3rd NCA. This is not to suggest that he has sufficient knowledge of all of the scientific explanation included within the report in order to support those specific claims. Rather, as Special Envoy, it is fair to believe that Stern has sufficient epistemological familiarity with the generation of the report to either defend its authority as scientific knowledge directly or direct concerns to appropriate respondents. Thus, Stern’s status as US special envoy suggests the epistemologically compatibility of his claim of the authority of the 3rd NCA—that is, the claim he is making is compatible with the expected epistemic resources of the claimant.

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The ethical character of Stern’s claim proves more problematic for my acceptance of his claim to represent science. The character of Stern’s claim, a public speech, did not include cruelty, violence, or deceit—that we know of—and therefore need not keep us here. However, the method through which Stern makes his claim to represent science is questionable. Returning to the specific claim, quoted above, we see that Stern lumps his claim to scientific authority in with a list of policy claims. This method makes his representative claim appear as if it should be treated similarly to the other members of his list. By including scientific explanations of cause and effect within a list of policy “success” Stern is treating the 3rd NCA as a policy success, rather than a source of explanation. However, the other listed climate “actions” are all new policy rules that importantly require a different type of judgment. More specifically, these other acts of the Obama administration would be judged based on their ability to achieve their stated ends while also satisfying our normative expectations. Stern’s representation of the 3rd NCA, on the other hand, does not ask us to judge the success of a rule at achieving a desired end but rather requires us to judge the permissibility of future acts—the authoritative treatment of the 3rd NCA in future policy-making. Insofar as the claim to represent scientific authority is fundamentally different in kind and in the judgment required by the audience to the claim, we should question the acceptability of Stern’s lumping of them together. Of course, this is not intended to suggest that Stern’s claim to represent the authority of science should be rejected or accepted. I am merely demonstrating the sort of question the public should be addressing when judging the acceptability of Stern’s claim.

From the example of Stern’s speech we learn three things about the representation of scientific authority. Regarding the practices of judging representative claims, we learn, first, that the political aim of the claim of a representative is not necessarily the same as the scope of the

174 scientific explanation being represented. Second, the means through which a claim is made may be ethically questionable despite the avoidance of such clearly unethical actions as the use of violence. Regarding our understanding of the authority of representative claims, we learn, third, that scientific explanations do not necessarily bear authority within policy-making and that political action—making a representative claim—is necessary for scientific explanation of cause and effect relationships within the biophysical world to become authoritative within politics.

Specifically, the 3rd NCA lacks authority within US climate policy-making until Stern’s claim, or others like it, that we come to judge whether or not the 3rd NCA warrants authority within environmental policy-making.

b. G77+China Walkout at COP-19

In 2013, the G77 and China walked out of negotiations at the 19th Conference of the

Parties (COP19) in Warsaw after they felt that developed countries were dismissive of the need to address “loss and damage” as a part of a UN climate agreement. Loss and damage, and particularly unavoidable loss, focuses attention on financially compensating countries for damages caused by climate change which could not be avoided through mitigation or adaptation.

What consideration of loss and damage adds to policy-makers’ previous focus on mitigation and adaptation is concern for those negative impacts of climate change which are unavoidable. More specifically, the concern expressed by the G77+China was over the inability to recuperate costs for adaptations that are no longer effective for addressing currently expected unavoidable impacts (Huq, Roberts, and Fenton 2013). The US and other developed countries have justified avoiding addressing loss and damage because of concerns about legal liability (Sethi 2013) or the need for the creation of new UN institutions (Vidal 2013).

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It may initially be unclear why the issue of loss and damage or the G77+China walkout is illustrative of a claim to represent the authority of scientific explanation, given that legal liability and the design of political institutions are certainly outside of the authority of scientific explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect. However, it is not the possible policy responses—liability and/or institution creation—that are important here. Nor is the rhetoric of the scientific explanation of loss and damage our focus here, for the same reasons that were offered above for the 3rd NCA. Rather, to understand one aspect of the authority of scientific explanation within COP19, we must give our attention to the claim to represent the scientific explanation of loss and damage made by the G77+China—their walkout itself. More specifically, the G77+China claimed that the biophysical explanations of cause and effect included under the title of loss and damage should be understood as bearing the authority of science, and, in walking out, claimed that this authority was not being rightly acknowledged.

Given that the G77+China left international negotiations over an issue that was explicitly focused on their own national financial situations, the possibility of their aims being republican in nature may be doubted. However, once the G77+China’s claim to represent scientific authority is clearly distinguished from their claim for a particular political response, the republican nature of their scientific claim becomes clear. More specifically, in walking out over loss and damage, the G77+China represented the authority of scientific explanation of unavoidable negative impacts of climate change. Insofar as these unavoidable impacts have potential consequences for all participants in the negotiations in which the G77+China were making their claim, the global nature of the claim is clearly compatible with the good of all.

Of greater concern here, if we are able to judge the G77+China’s walkout as an acceptable claim to representation, is whether or not the scientific explanation supporting the

176 principle of loss and damage can be separated from the political nature of its use within the more specific claim of the G77+China—that developed countries are paying too little attention to the financial effects of loss and damage on developing countries’ economies. The question to be asked here is whether or not their claim can be treated as epistemologically defensible and compatible as a claim to represent scientific explanation. The defensibility of the claim does not immediately seem problematic. The epistemological compatibility between the claim being made and the claimant should again not present much concern, and for reasons similar to those offered in Stern’s case. As representatives of an intergovernmental organization of developing countries, it should be expected that the G77+China representatives had access to all information available to represent the interest of these nations within the negotiations. That information surely included the best available scientific explanations of the cause and effect relationships of climate change, and specifically as those relationships bear on the interests of these countries. Given this expectation for information access, it again seems likely that the individuals who made this claim to scientific authority—by walking out of negotiations—would be able to defend their claim should an account be asked for. Of course, such an opportunity for offering an account was not available in their walking out, and thus this potential epistemic defensibility must remain only speculative.

The ethical character of the G77+China’s claim may seem of concern because of the disruptive nature of the method chosen. More specifically, the use of a walkout may be seen as ethically unacceptable because it halted all further discussion or negotiation between nations despite the importance of an international agreement for dealing with the problems presented by climate change. What is of specific concern in this case is the lack of civility in this method of claiming to represent scientific authority. In other words, the G77+China claimed to represent

177 the authority of scientific biophysical explanation of the unavoidable effects of climate change by ending the process of negotiating an agreement on what to do about these effects.

Nevertheless, the G77+China’s unilateral stopping negotiations is not of sufficient ethical concern to require rejecting their claim to represent scientific authority because participation in deliberations need not be civil or respectable to be acceptable, and in fact a requirement of respectability would unjustly exclude some participants in deliberations (Young 1990, 136-41).

Therefore, the G77+China’s claim to represent scientific authority is not made unacceptable based on the uncivil and disruptive nature of their claim.

From the example of the G77+China’s walkout of international climate negotiations we learn four things about the representation of scientific authority. Regarding the practices of judging representative claims, we learn, first, that having a republican aim does not necessarily require that there are not also self-interested reasons for making the same claim. Second, we see that the scientific biophysical explanation must be differentiated from the political consequences of the claim in order to identify the epistemological support required for a claim to be defensible and compatible with the claim-maker. Third, the G77+China’s walkout draws our attention to the acceptability of representative claims despite their uncivil or potentially disruptive nature.

Fourth, regarding our understanding of the authority of representative claims, we learn from this case that the authority of science may be used not only to justify current or future policies, but may also as to criticize positions of others.

c. A Protester in Manila

The protestor shown in the foreground of the photo below offers a third example of how someone may claim to represent scientific authority.

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(AP) Figure 2. Protester at U.S. Embassy in Manila “Protesters display their placards during a rally in observance of World Climate Day near the U.S. Embassy in Manila. The protest coincided with the annual climate talks of the Conference of Parties in Durban” ("Protests during the climate change conference in Durban" 2013)

Though little information is available about this specific protester, all of which is included in the caption to the photo, what information is available is sufficient to be able to judge the acceptability of her claim to represent science. In this case, the claim being made is that women suffer from negative biophysical effects of climate change, though, importantly, what those specific causes and effects are is not included in the claim made here. As will be discussed in more detail below, there is a direct connection between the specific claim being made and the requirements for knowledge about the protestor in order to judge her claim. In other words, more knowledge of the claimant is necessary in some cases than in other cases. Nevertheless, even a minimal scientific knowledge-claim such as this may warrant some degree of authority.

Insofar as the claim of the protester draws attention to the negative biophysical consequences of climate change on women, the explicit aim of the protester’s claim is the good of women. Since the protester was protesting at the US embassy in Manila in support of World

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Climate Day, it may seem as if her claim should not be understood as satisfying the requirement of a republican aim, since women—the explicit referent of the claim is a part and not the whole of either the US or global populations. However, as was the case with the G77+China, the explicit aim of the claim need not be the only aim considered and, for different reasons, we will again see that the republican aim requirement may be satisfied in this case. A claim about

“women’s health” is, first, not solely aimed at the health of any particular individual women— broadening the aim to some degree. Additionally, the health of women may be thought to bear on the community more generally because of the proportion of the population represented by women, or the more general expected effects of a decrease in women’s health would have on the good of the whole community. Or most broadly, it might be argued that the necessary role of women for the continuation and health of the species demonstrates that at a certain point the negative health effects of climate change on women will unavoidably affect all humans. With these interpretations of the aim of a concern for women’s health I am suggesting alternative ways in which this particular protester’s aim may be understood. Nevertheless, none of these different interpretations may be convincing to the relevant political community—in this case U.S. citizens since her claim is directed at the U.S. Embassy in Manila—who must be left to make the final judgment.

Given how little is known about this protester, the epistemological acceptability of her claim can certainly be doubted. The epistemological compatibility of this claim—that climate change has negative biophysical consequences on women—is uncertain. Recall that compatibility requires that the claim-maker possess the knowledge necessary to defend the accuracy of their claim as representing scientific knowledge. If it was known that the protester had terminal degrees in climatology, medicine, and epidemiology, then her ability to defend this

180 claim may seem likely, as those degrees can act as sufficient but not necessary proxies for demonstrating the actual epistemological defense. However, since we lack knowledge of whether or not she possesses the necessary knowledge or the appropriate degree proxies, it is less certain that a defense could be offered. Of course if the opportunity for the protester to offer an account of her claim was available those judging her claim could inquire about her knowledge. However, such an account is not possible in this case, and therefore we must judge the epistemic defensibility of her claim solely on the little knowledge that is currently available. In a manner similar to the example of the claim of vaccines discussed above, the content of this protester’s claim matters for understanding the claims’ potential compatibility More specifically, the unknown ability of this protester to defend her claim limits the scope of our understanding of the claim being made. In this case, though it must be recalled that this protester is claiming to represent science’s authoritative biophysical explanation of the relationship of climate change as cause and women’s health as effect, but no greater detail is being offered. She is not claiming that any particular action must be taken in order to prevent this negative effect. She is also not claiming that any cause more specific than GHG accumulation within the atmosphere should be stopped or regulated. Thus, a response consistent with accepting the authority of this command, should it be judged acceptable, would be to conduct more research into the relationship between climate change and women’s health, or at least confirm what knowledge is available. Returning to the uncertain ability of this protestor to epistemologically defend her claim, the defense necessary for a call for greater research is much more likely to be satisfied by a general knowledge of the scientific explanations of the case of climate change. A call to investigate the relationship between women’s health and climate change would only require a superficial understanding of the World Health Organizations report on the subject ("Gender, Climate

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Change, and Health" 2014)—a degree of knowledge that could safely be assumed to be possessed in this case given that this protester is clearly concerned about the particular issue of the effects of climate change on women’s health.

Of course, the protestor may not have intended merely for additional research to result from making her representative claim. It is possible that, in representing scientific explanations of the effects of climate change on women’s health, this protestor sought more specific policy actions. Nevertheless, without greater knowledge of both the claimant and the claim being made, more specific action could not be warranted in this case. Thus, we importantly see that the claimant does not have complete control over the consequences of her accepted claim to represent scientific authority. In other words, in deliberatively determining the acceptability of a claim to scientific authority, the consequences of accepting the command are also partially determined. Importantly, this influence on interpreting the consequences of accepting a representative claim does mean that those under the potential authority of any claim are at liberty to completely determine what obedience to that authority would mean. For instance, in the case just discussed, those judging the acceptability of the claim made by the protester could not defend that claim as requiring any specific health policy, as this clearly extends authority beyond the claim being made and the potential epistemological defensibility of the claimant.

Given that a requirement for civil methods for claiming scientific authority should be rejected, as discussed in the case of the G77+China walkout, this protester’s methods may not raise many new ethical concerns. So long as it is concluded that her method of protesting was not unacceptably disruptive—such as by hindering an ambulance carrying a patient from arriving at a hospital for emergency treatment, there would be little reason to reject her claim on ethical grounds. Nevertheless, it is important to note that discussion of the ethical acceptability of this

182 case would still be needed. In other words, the initial appearance of protesting in an acceptable manner, as is offered by the photo being referenced here, does not preclude the opportunity for an individual to offer evidence and reasonably question the account of the events of the protest which are being judged.

From the example of the protestor in Manila we learn three things about the representation of scientific authority. Regarding the practices of judging representative claims, we learn, first, that the republican aim of a claim may not always be explicit and is open to different interpretations. Second, we see that the account offered by a claimant has significant effects on the epistemological compatibility and consequences of the claim. More specifically, the knowledge available to those judging the acceptability of the claim about the claim being made and the claimant will limit the acceptable interpretations of what is being commanded by the particular claim to represent scientific authority. Third, regarding our understanding of the authority of representative claims, we learn from the epistemic limitations of this case that the specific commands of scientific authority in any particular case is not solely determined by the representative of that authority. Those judging the acceptability of the claim are also partly responsible for determining the authoritative command that follows from the acceptance of a representative claim.

IV. Conclusion

In the previous chapter, I argued that anyone could represent the authority of science, but that not all claims to scientific representation should be accepted as authoritative. In this chapter,

I argued for how representative claims should be judged I then drew on three examples of claims to represent scientific authority to demonstrate how the determination of their acceptability might

183 occur. Importantly, I did not argue for the authority of any of these examples, as doing so would assume one of two positions—neither of which could be defended. Specifically, in order to conclude that any of these examples are necessarily authoritative or unauthoritative would require either that my theory could be applied perfectly to these real-world cases, leaving no possible doubt or disagreement, or that my judgments should stand for the actual democratic judgments of the public who should decide the acceptability of this authority. Instead, what I have done here is demonstrate the conversations that the public should have in deciding on the authority of a claim to scientific representation, with the goal being to clarify how the process of judgment of any particular claim would occur. In the next chapter I conclude by briefly summarizing the source and limits of science’s authority, and address the broad implications of recognizing this authority would have for liberal democratic environmental policy-making.

Specifically, I suggest that recognizing scientific authority within policy-making prevents the politicize science within environmental policy-making without diminishing the democratic control over decisions about policies.

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Chapter 6

Conclusion: The Avoidance of the Politicization of Science

In the previous chapter, I demonstrated how individuals should go about judging specific claims to represent the authority of science. Importantly, my argument was not for binding judgments on which claims should be accepted as representations of science, but rather an explication of the considerations and conversations individuals might have when making their own judgments of the acceptability of a particular representative claim. The reason for not defending my judgments as binding is that all individuals who would fall under the authority of the claim are the ultimate determiner of which claims to represent scientific authority are acceptable. Nevertheless, judgments of who represents scientific authority are not entirely subjective. The examples of the previous chapter were used to offer insight into how judgments would be made if my theory were accepted and the appropriate body of individuals set about to determine the authority of science in making a particular environmental policy. In other words, what Chapter Five added to my argument was an answer the question of what criteria should be used to determine who represents the authority of science in policy-making.

Thus, what I have offered up to this point is a theory of the authority of science over biophysical explanations of cause and effect relationships within environmental policy-making and an account of how individuals can represent that authority. The grounds for science’s authority within environmental policy-making should now be clear, as should the manner through which that authority will come to be represented within policy-making. What is left to be done here is to detail some of the broader implications of my theory for the practice of policy- making and the resulting policies. More specifically, how does accepting representations of

185 scientific authority within environmental policy-making change the practices of policy-making?

And, how will the policies that result from this changed process differ from current policies where the authority of science was not accepted?

Having defended the possibility for all individuals to represent the authority of science, it may be wondered how my theory will produce different outcomes from the current situation in which all individuals can claim to represent biophysical explanations, none of which has authority. In Section I, I briefly summarize the theory of scientific authority that I have developed throughout my dissertation. In doing so, I draw particular attention to the justifications for the authority of science and the extent and limits to this authority within the broader environmental policy-process. In Section II, I further develop the argument, presented in Chapter

Three, that recognizing the appropriate authority of science will prevent at least some instances of the politicization of science. More specifically, I elaborate on how the authority of science and the resultant avoidance of the politicization of science will return the focus of environmental policy-making to addressing political conflicts—conflicts over relations of power—as they relate to achieving a sustainable society, rather than the current focus on identifying the right biophysical explanation—a focus that is premised by the assumption that the political conflicts facing sustainability are resolvable by finding the “right” biophysical explanation.

I. The Grounds and Scope of Scientific Authority in Environmental Policy-making

The first thing to remember about the authority of science in environmental policy- making is that this authority is grounded in the contribution of scientific explanations of the biophysical world toward achieving sustainability. Any use of scientific explanation not aimed at contributing to sustainability cannot be authoritative under my account. This is not to suggest

186 that the vast explanations of the biophysical relationships of cause and effect that do not directly speak to the problem of sustainability should not be treated authoritatively, but only that my theory does not extend to those cases.

Further it must be recalled that, in addressing the authority of science within environmental policy-making, I intentionally distinguished this authority from consideration of the proper place of politics in regulating the role of our sociopolitical values when producing scientific knowledge. Though the proper role of science in politics is a different question than the question of the proper role of politics in scientific knowledge-production, the two are certainly related. What I argued for is the legitimate authority of scientific explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect within the process of environmental policy-making. But science cannot have authority, so what is to be done with the “authority” of science in the actual policy process of the real world? Determining who is able to represent scientific explanations was required to answer this question. I argued that the ability of all individuals to hold some degree of scientific explanation combined with the inability to sufficiently differentiate between scientific knowledge-holders requires the recognition that anyone may represent scientific explanations to some degree, though it is crucial that those under the authority of these claims be able to judge who is representing science to the degree compatible with her or his abilities.

Unfortunately, the inequality in knowledge of scientific explanations that produces the different abilities to represent science within policy-making also prevents all citizens from being equally able to judge the content of scientific claims. Therefore, some other grounds for judgment is required if it is the case that anyone can represent and judge representations of science.

To find these grounds, I turned to Rehfeld’s theory of political representation and

O’Neill’s account of the judgment of the rhetoric of scientific experts. Despite the fact that

187 experts are not the only individuals capable of representing science within policy-making,

O’Neill’s theory provided useful guidance for understanding how all individuals are able to judge claims to represent science accepting their unequal knowledge of science. When considering the grounds of scientific authority in environmental policy-making—particularly the contribution made to achieving sustainability—in light of Rehfeld’s theory, we see that the good aimed at by any claim to represent scientific authority must be republican or the good of all.

Additionally, by drawing on O’Neill’s account of the role of rhetoric in political deliberations/judgments, we see two things about how representative claims are judged. First, claims are judged based on the epistemic compatibility between the claim and the claimant—that is, the claimant either can or does defend the epistemic validity or source of her claim. Second, claims are judged based on the ethical character of the claim and the method of making it. In total, what this demonstrates is the ability of individuals to judge the claims of others to represent scientific explanations without requiring an equal knowledge of the scientific content of those claims.

What is left to consider now are what implications my theory has for the process and results of environmental policy-making. If my theory is correct and acceptable representations of science should provide the authoritative explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect within environmental policy-making, how will policy-making be different? And equally important, how will the policies that result from this process be different?

II. Scientific Authority as Remedy for the Politicization of Science

To begin to understand how environmental policy-making will be different if my theory were adopted, we should investigate how my theory addresses current problems with

188 environmental policymaking. Specifically, how does the acceptance of science’s authority, as I have defended it here, address the problem of the politicization of science? Of course, to find an answer to this question we must first clarify what is meant by the politicization of science and why this is problematic. The politicization of science is defined differently by different scholars of the phenomenon. For instance, Guston considers it to be the rendering of norms and practices of politics unreflexively into the production of scientific explanations (2001, 399). In other words, Guston argues that the politicization of science occurs when individuals treat scientific explanation and political judgments similarly without prior consideration of whether they should be treated the same. Pielke, more specifically, identifies the politicization of science as the equating of scientific arguments with political arguments (2004, 407). Brown, on the other hand, is critical of claims of politicized science because they “mistakenly suggest the possibility of science advice that is entirely free of politics” (2009, 2). Nevertheless, there are still better and worse ways for politics to be included within science for Brown. The politicization of science becomes problematic when claims to represent science are used to hide political representations—that is, when political representations that mediate relations of power are obscured by claims to scientific representations that explain and control empirical phenomena

(Brown 2009, 13). When we consider the politicization of science in light of my argument for the authority of scientific explanations within environmental policy-making, we see a common thread which unites these definitions around a shared concern for democratic politics.

Specifically, the politicization of science occurs when the authority of science is claimed in support of a policy outcome rather than a biophysical explanation of cause and effect, which is problematic because it grants unwarranted authority to the scientific representative over the

189 entire policy process including decisions about power relations between individuals that rely upon sociopolitical values as well as biophysical explanations.

My theory has clearly delineated how science should be used within policy-making. I argued that science is not only useful but is authoritative as source of biophysical explanation; it must be remembered that scientific authority does not and cannot command policy outcomes.

This argument provides reason to be critical of the politicization of science—where science’s biophysical authority claimed to be sufficient justification for evaluative or prescriptive positions—because to politicize science would be to wrongly claim science’s authority. Of course, entirely avoiding the politicization of science depends upon living in an ideal world where all individuals act rightly and therefore do not wrongly claim authority.

In addition to providing reasons to expect less politicization of science, my theory also offers methods for preventing the politicization of science in a non-ideal world. First, it becomes easier to identify situations in which that authority is being wrongfully claimed by clarifying what authority science should have. More specifically, we know that scientific authority is unwarranted whenever it is claimed to advocate for a policy position rather than to merely explain biophysical relationships of cause and effect. Second, my theory not only identifies instances of the politicization of science, it also provides individuals with reasons to reject that wrongful claim to authority. In offering a good reason to reject a claim to accept or reject a policy proposal based on the authority of science when that reason is not directly related to biophysical cause and effect, my theory also ultimately returns the focus of policy-making to politics rather than scientific explanation.

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Recall from Chapter Five, individuals judge the aim and rhetoric of representations of science rather than the content of the claim—the scientific explanation. Decreased concern within policy-making over which explanation is the “right” explanation results from properly identifying the scope of scientific authority to biophysical explanations and acknowledging the uncertain ability of lay-citizens to judge these explanations. The overall implication for policy- making is to shift attention from questions of what we know to questions of how we should act.

In other words, by distinguishing between the processes of scientific knowledge-production and the use of that knowledge within environmental policy-making and addressing only the use of science rather than its content, the focus of policy-making returns to politics rather than biophysical explanation. For instance, the demand for President Obama to act as a climatologist’s “peer”—reviewing specific scientific findings and critiquing model fit or the lack of a necessary control variable—is eliminated and President Obama would remain a political actor—discussing the acceptability of the claim to represent scientific authority and what should be done in response to the acceptance of that claim. Recall that what makes the politicization of science problematic is the use of biophysical explanatory authority to obscure or decide political issues over the mediation of power relations between people. Under my theory, the focus of debates in policy-making is political—over the relationships of power and how that power should be used to achieve sustainability. Debate over the content of scientific explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect are not entirely avoided or ignored in my theory, but those debates occur during the democratized production of science rather than while science is being used within policy-making. What results from this distinction is that science is rightly politicized during the production of scientific knowledge, but not wrongly politicized when environmental policy is being made.

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My defense of the democratic authority of scientific explanations of the biophysical relationships of cause and effect should not be taken as precluding all democratic control over the determination of environmental policies. Of course, even my theory the demarcation between scientific and policy-making authorities is not entirely black and white. Even after distinguishing scientific authority from policy-making authority in theory, it is not the case that each authority acts uninfluenced by the other within its rightful sphere. As rightly identified by co- productionists, when actual persons are drawing on these authorities the two become more difficult to divide. In other words, the causal arrows between the production of scientific knowledge and social order ultimately collapse. More specifically, the collapse occurs in debating policy decisions and in identifying who represents scientific authority in a particular case because these debates are influenced by both biophysical explanations and sociopolitical values. What does result from my theory is that political debate over policies focuses on the right questions—questions about choices between policy outcomes and the political representatives of scientific explanation rather than questions of which is the “right” biophysical explanation.

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