The Epistemic Significance of Values in Science

University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository

Graduate Studies The Vault: Electronic Theses and Dissertations

2014-01-29 The Epistemic Significance of Values in Science

Holter, Brandon

Holter, B. (2014). The Epistemic Significance of Values in Science (Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/28132 http://hdl.handle.net/11023/1317 doctoral thesis

University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

The Epistemic Significance of Values in Science

Brandon Holter

A DISSERTATION

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

CALGARY, ALBERTA

JANURARY, 2014

The proper role of values in science has been a hotly debated topic for many decades now. The traditional view of epistemic justification holds that scientific objectivity requires suppression of value judgments; theories are only justified by an impartial analysis of the evidence (Haack 1998; Pinnick, Koertge, and Almedar 2003). Traditionalists worry that values bias scientists, leading them to believe what they would like to be true regardless of the evidence. Proponents of value-laden science argue that the justification of scientific theories cannot be isolated from moral and practical judgments (Kuhn 1962; Longino 2002a). The arguments they advance purport to show that values are not merely biases, values can play a positive role in justifying beliefs. Underdetermination arguments claim that evidence alone cannot determine theory choice (Laudan 1990; Longino 1979; Quine 1951).These arguments do not motivate an epistemic role for values in science, however, because values may influence scientists' theoretical beliefs without justifying those beliefs. As a result, philosophers have advanced a number of new arguments for the epistemic necessity of values judgments. This dissertation examines several of these arguments with an eye toward their deficiencies in order to develop an account of values in scientific reasoning that does not legitimate bias or delusion, as the traditionalists fear. Drawing on both old and new arguments, I argue that values help determine when a theory is sufficiently justified by the evidence (Douglas 2000; Kitcher 2011a; Rudner 1953). While evidence alone provides justifying reasons for belief, scientists must decide how much evidence is needed to justify scientific claims. Different scientific inquiries require different epistemic standards and, I argue, traditional value-free epistemologies cannot account for this variation. Philosophers cannot explain why scientists in different contexts adopt different epistemic standards without appealing to value judgments. On the view I adopt, the evidence justifies a claim when we have good reasons to believe we can act on that claim; a theory is sufficiently justified in the epistemic sense when it is sufficiently justified for practical purposes. Allowing values to guide these decisions, I argue, does not allow values to displace rigorous attention to the evidence.

ii Table of Contents

Abstract...... ii

Table of Contents...... iii

Introduction...... 1

Chapter 1: Epistemic Holism and Relativism...... 11

1.1 Three Problems for Holism...... 16

1.1.1 The Motivational Problem...... 16

1.1.2 Evidential Ignorance and Underdetermination...... 19

1.1.3 Equal Legitimacy of Values...... 25

1.2 Diversity and Equal Legitimacy...... 29

1.2.1 Social Epistemology...... 29

1.2.2 Longino's Social Epistemology...... 35

1.2.3 From Subjective to Social Relativism: Equal Legitimacy Revisited...... 41

1.3 Conclusion...... 45

Chapter 2: Introducing Goal-Oriented Epistemology...... 48

2.1 Kitcher's Epistemic Holism...... 54

2.1.1 Scientific Significance in Science, Truth, and Democracy...... 54

2.1.2 Kitcher's Goal-Oriented Epistemology...... 62

2.2 Goal-Oriented Epistemology and Relativism...... 69

2.2.1 Significance and Evidence...... 69

2.2.2 Relativism and Equal Legitimacy...... 76

2.2.3 Social Epistemology, Equal Legitimacy, and Evidence...... 83

iii 2.3 Conclusion...... 92

Chapter 3: Motivating Goal-Oriented Epistemology...... 95

3.1 A Question of Sufficiency...... 102

3.2 The Variation of Epistemic Standards...... 108

3.3 Suspension of Belief...... 113

3.4 Strategic Acceptance and Epistemic Justification...... 118

3.5 The Limited Availability of evidence...... 127

3.6 Conclusion...... 133

Chapter 4: Getting to Know Microbial Species...... 136

4.1 Identifying Microbial Species...... 140

4.2 Microbial Species and Lateral Gene Transfer (LGT)...... 146

4.3 Explaining the Sufficiency of Genetic Evidence for Classification...... 154

4.4 Conclusion...... 159

Chapter 5: Pluralism, Objectivity, and Values...... 162

5.1 Constructivism and Realism...... 169

5.2 Ontological Pluralism and Values...... 172

5.3 Mapping a Complex World: Theoretical Pluralism and Values...... 176

5.4 Carving Nature's Useful Joints: Epistemic Pluralism and Values...... 183

5.5 Conclusion...... 191

Bibliography...... 205

iv Introduction

It is relatively uncontroversial that values – our aspirations for ourselves, others, and the world in general – influence science. Almost nothing is entirely uncontroversial in philosophy but philosophers of science have generally come to accept that it is impossible to isolate science's systematic attempt to understand the world around us from moral and practical judgments. The history of brutal experimentation on captive victims of the Nazi regime, for example, teaches us the importance of moral values in thinking about what kind of scientific research is permissible.

Research methodologies are also constrained by the limited availability of time, helpful collaborators, funding, and technology. Scientific practice, like any other practice with implications for others, must be informed by moral and practical considerations. Philosophers disagree, however, about the epistemic status of moral and practical judgments in science.

Values, many argue, should be relegated to the practical sphere of reasoning about how to act and kept out of epistemic judgments about what to believe.

On one side of the debate are what I will call 'epistemic holists', those who believe that values inform epistemic assessments of the justification of scientific claims1. Because philosophers with very different views have advocated different epistemic roles for values, any single description or label for this disparate amalgamation of doctrines is likely to prove problematic. I like the term 'holism' because it captures the idea that practical and moral considerations about our goals and how best to achieve them cannot be segregated from

1 Some well-known holists include: Philip Kitcher (2001; 2011a), Thomas Kuhn (1977), Helen Longino (1990; 2002a), and Stephen Stich (1990).

1 epistemic reasoning about the justification of empirical claims; convictions about how the world ought to be and beliefs about how the world actually is form an interconnected web of mutually justifying beliefs. One cannot be isolated from the other.

My goal is not to put forward a new view about how values inform scientific thinking, although I am sure that by the end of this dissertation my position will be subtly different from others'. Holists do not suffer from a lack of possible roles for values to play in science, they have described quite a few. What philosophers often lack, I will argue, are epistemic motivations for their views. While holists have described many ways values influence scientific practice, they often fail to provide arguments to show that these influences have anything to do with the justification of scientific knowledge. My aim is to provide the philosophical motivations for believing that values have epistemic significance.

There is a long tradition of philosophical opposition to value judgments in reasoning about matters of fact. Some of the logical positivists, with whom many discussions of modern philosophy of science begin, famously declared values to be merely emotive expressions, incapable of truth or justification at best, meaningless utterances devoid of cognitive content at worst (Ayer 1936; Carnap 1935). As arbitrary and purely subjective opinions, the argument goes, value judgments are unable to provide reasons for believing anything. Furthermore, because all values are seen as equally arbitrary, allowing some values to influence scientific reasoning would, for the positivists, legitimate letting any and all values do so, even religious, racist, and sexist values. Science avoids making decisions about whose values are right and whose are wrong by prohibiting all of them. Scientific objectivity is traditionally taken to require

2 dispassionate impartiality and a deliberate suppression of values in the reasoning process of scientists (Koertge 2000; Ruphy 2006).

Adherents of the value-free tradition not only worry that values are arbitrary, they also point out that value commitments can be biasing influences. People are often psychologically disposed to believe what they would like to be true and ignore inconvenient facts (Goldman

1995; Haack 1998). If scientists are encouraged to bring their moral, political, and practical judgments to bear on scientific matters, they worry, scientists will be entitled to believe whatever they find convenient, regardless of the evidence. Honest inquiry into the truth of matters will be replaced with political correctness, self interest, and empty rhetoric (Gross and Levitt 1994;

Pinnick, Koertge, and Almedar 2003). The challenge for holists is to develop a philosophical account of value-laden science without legitimating bias and ignorance, including sexism, racism, and religious dogmatism.

Underdetermination arguments emerged as the most popular challenge to value-free science in the post-positivist era (Laudan 1984; 1990; Longino 1979; Quine 1951).

Underdetermination theorists argue that evidence alone never supports one hypothesis to the exclusion of all others. No matter how much evidence is gathered, multiple theories will always be plausible; evidence underdetermines theory choice. Holists conclude that something besides evidence must therefore determine theory choice and only values can do so. Underdetermination arguments are often accompanied by examples from the history of science that show scientists accepting hypotheses on the basis of their value commitments when evidence alone is unable to settle a theoretical dispute (Kuhn 1962; Longino and Doell 1983; Shapin and Schaffer 1985).

3 Traditionalists push back by arguing that neither underdetermination nor the fact that scientists sometimes choose a theory based on value judgments motivates a genuinely epistemic role for values. If the evidence does not support one theory over another, some argue, we can suspend judgment and admit that we do not know which theory to accept (Haack 1998, 110). Nor does the mere fact that some scientists choose theories based on their values prove that they are justified in doing so. Values, the traditionalists admit, sometimes cause people to believe a scientific claim, but psychological causes of belief should be distinguished from epistemic reasons for belief (Haack 1998, 93). Underdetermination arguments demonstrate that, in practice, values influence scientists' beliefs. They do not show that values provide epistemic justification.

Some feminist philosophers of science and social epistemologists argue that biases are unavoidable and that, as a result, scientific communities with a diversity of biased perspectives are epistemically superior to scientific communities without such diversity (Longino 1990;

2002a; Solomon 2001). Disagreements and critical discussions between scientists, they argue, are important epistemic influences because criticism exposes faulty reasoning and biases, forcing scientists to revise or abandon unjustified beliefs. Peer review, academic journals, and other public forums provide opportunities for scientists with different perspectives and different values to engage in constructive criticism. A diverse and critical community is more likely to recognize and expose the biases of individual scientists and therefore more likely to produce less biased theories in the long run.

Central to the argument is the assumption that biases are ineliminable from individuals' reasoning. Because unbiased inquiry is impossible, science must mitigate the influence of values

4 on individuals by structuring social institutions in a way that promotes dissent and critical interaction (Anderson 1995, 53). While admitting that values can biases scientists' reasoning, these feminists and social epistemologists argue that having many different biased perspectives openly competing in the marketplace of ideas is epistemically superior to any plausible alternative. The traditional ideal of value-free science, they argue, is impossible and continued commitment to the value-free ideal will only disguise the biases that inevitably inform scientific thinking (Longino 1990, 73-80).

A third view on the epistemic import of values for scientific reasoning was introduced by

Richard Rudner more than fifty years ago but has received increasing attention in recent years

(Douglas 2000; 2007; Elliott 2011; Kitcher 2011a). Rudner (1953) begins with the observation that error is always possible because all scientific knowledge is uncertain. The stringency of epistemic standards, he argues, is affected by the likely costs and benefits of belief: When there are risks to our goals associated with accepting or rejecting a hypothesis, epistemic standards must be altered to decrease the likelihood of realizing those risks. If accepting a false hypothesis will have disastrous consequences, for instance, scientists must guard against error by keeping epistemic standards high; if the risks are too great, more evidence is needed. Conversely, the likelihood of potential benefits should be maximized by keeping epistemic standards low when the potential for rewards is high and risks low. I call this view 'goal-oriented epistemology' because it ties epistemic standards to the likelihood of realizing the goals at stake. It makes the realization of goals, in both gaining benefits and avoiding harms, more likely. Goal-oriented epistemology can be summarized as the view that we are justified in believing a scientific claim

5 when the evidence is strong enough to justify its acceptance for practical purposes.

I adopt goal-oriented epistemology and develop an argument for the claim that epistemic standards should be, and often are, altered in light of risks and rewards. I take it as obvious, although I provide arguments to show, that in different scientific contexts some epistemic standards are more stringent than others. Because all scientific claims are uncertain, scientists, or perhaps philosophers, must decide how much uncertainty is tolerable. Experimental physics, for example, sometimes demands near-certainty while other scientific disciplines are simply unable to obtain such strong evidence. Traditionalists must either explain why epistemic standards are allowed to vary or deny that they vary at all. The variety of epistemic standards found across different scientific contexts, I argue, cannot be explained without appeal to values. When gathering more evidence is impractical or immoral, for instance, scientists sometimes accept the available evidence as sufficiently strong even though they could, in principle, demand more evidential support. A value-free account of epistemic justification cannot explain why scientists tolerate very little uncertainty in some contexts while relying on relatively weak evidence in others.

The only motivation philosophers need to adopt epistemic holism is the observation that value-free epistemic principles cannot account for the various epistemic standards of actual science. Goal-oriented epistemology explains why scientists adhere to different epistemic standards in different contexts by appealing to the different moral and practical values at stake.

Unless and until value-free principles for determining scientific standards are offered, I argue, the best account of the epistemology of science links epistemic standards of sufficient evidence

6 to practical standards of justification. A theory is epistemically justified when the evidence is strong enough to justify its acceptance for practical purposes. If the consequences of error are severe and the likelihood of those errors judged too high, stronger evidential support is needed.

If, on the other hand, the potential benefits of accepting a theory as true outweigh the potential risks of error, the theory or claim is epistemically justified.

Chapter 1 begins by describing the traditional value-free view and its reasons for opposing values as epistemic influences. Three main concerns are identified: Problems about ignoring evidence, the supposed arbitrary nature of values, and a lack of motivating arguments.

Along the way, I introduce underdetermination arguments and the concerns they raise. The second half of the chapter is devoted to the argument for diversity offered by feminist philosophers of science and social epistemologists. I pay particular attention to Helen Longino's writings because her work offers the most comprehensive attempt to deal with the traditional problems. The chapter concludes by laying out the concern, raised by several philosophers, that

Longino's argument from diversity commits her to accepting all values as equally legitimate, even racist, sexist, and religious values.

Chapter 2 introduces goal-oriented epistemology through the work of Philip Kitcher, who has developed a comprehensive view about the role of values in science that relies on neither underdetermination arguments nor appeals to diversity. Kitcher is a moving target, however. The chapter begins with his earlier (2001) argument concerning theoretical pluralism and explores that argument's defects. I then examine his later (2011a) view, which is a kind of goal-oriented epistemology. Although many aspects of Kitcher's former view are compatible with his goal-

7 oriented epistemology, I argue that his examples of theoretical pluralism are better understood as instances of shifting epistemic standards; the cases Kitcher describes can be understood as instances where scientists adopt different epistemic standards rather than different theories. I spend considerable time arguing that this view overcomes many of the problems that face both the traditional and holist positions described in Chapter 1. After arguing that no acceptable view of science, value-free or holistic, can accept all values as arbitrary or of equal legitimacy, I revisit

Longino's social epistemology. Specifically, I argue that her strategy for avoiding equal legitimacy problems undermines her motivation to epistemic holism. I conclude that the motivation to holism that diversity provides is inevitably at odds with any possible resolution of the equal legitimacy problem.

Chapter 3 offers an argument for goal-oriented epistemology. First Rudner's argument is introduced, followed by a brief argument to the effect that different scientific disciplines and even different contexts within disciplines require different epistemic standards. Traditionalists have claimed that value judgments can be isolated from empirical scientific claims by segregating practical and epistemic reasoning. Rudner's point, they argue, concerns questions about how to act rather than what to believe (Jeffrey 1956; Levi 1960; Steele 2012). I press the point by demanding value-free epistemic criteria for sufficient evidential support. Merely distinguishing between practical and epistemic reasoning does not show that epistemic standards can be determined without appeal to practical considerations. The final section takes up one possible explanation for the variety of epistemic standards found across scientific contexts: the limited availability of evidence. Some scientific claims may be held to lower standards simply

8 because less evidence is available. How much evidence is available, I argue, largely depends on practical decisions about what evidence is worth the time, effort, and resources to collect as well as technological limitations. If the limited availability of evidence provides a value-free explanation of the variation of epistemic standards, traditionalists must determine to what extent evidence is unavailable in principle rather than due to moral and practical constraints on inquiry.

Chapter 4 provides an interesting example of how low scientific standards can fall when error presents little threat to our values. Some microbiologists, who already have a difficult task in identifying the species of microbial organisms, are engaged in research on the ancient evolutionary history of microbes. Unlike dinosaurs and other extinct plants and animals, microbes rarely leave behind any fossilized evidence. Even if they did, microbiologists can glean very little information from them because they must rely almost exclusively on genetic evidence.

Microbiologists use sophisticated techniques of statistical analysis and computer modeling to reconstruct an image of ancient microbial evolution by analyzing the genomes of their contemporary descendants. The evidence is weak and their conclusions tentative, but microbiologists continue to engage in the project. If epistemic standards were uniform and these scientists were held to the standards of other areas of investigation, the project would be indefensible. Instead, the traditional view must explain why such low standards are tolerated. I explain the weakness of their standards by appealing to the nearly complete lack of moral and practical consequences of error.

Chapter 5 confronts traditional concerns about values and objectivity, examining some attempts to reconcile epistemic holism with the goal of representing nature as it exists

9 independent of our beliefs and desires. It is often said that a good theory carves nature at the joints. Holists have argued that theoretical pluralism allows values to determine theory choices while maintaining a commitment to objectivity because multiple theories can be true of the same phenomena. Ronald Giere (1999) develops a metaphor about maps to demonstrate the point:

There can be many different but equally accurate maps of the same location. One may chart transportation routes, for example, while another displays geographical features. Depending on our goals and values, we can select different maps to suit our purposes. Although theoretical pluralism does not motivate an epistemic role for values in science, I argue the metaphor can be understood as a point about the plurality of epistemic standards rather than true theories. Rather than adopting different theories of the same phenomena, scientists may simply apply different standards of sufficient evidence.

Finally, in order to show that goal-oriented epistemology is consistent with the demands of objectivity, I rehabilitate the metaphor of carving nature at the joints, arguing that scientific inquiry is more like butchery than traditionalists imagine. Butchers do not carve an animal at every joint, they choose the joints that maximize the value of their product. Similarly, objective science does not require attention to all of the existing evidence, it requires only enough evidence to serve the aims of inquiry. The goal of this dissertation is not only to show that objectivity in science does not require value-freedom, as the traditionalist claims, but that scientific practice demands a robust epistemic role for values. Furthermore, the approach I adopt differs significantly from other prominent holists, like Longino and Kitcher, and avoids the problems associated with their views.

10 Chapter 1: Epistemic Holism and Relativism

Science is successful in producing both highly justified theories and theories that are instrumentally valuable. Scientific knowledge is not only accurate, representing nature as it exists independent of our beliefs and desires, but instrumental in helping us achieve moral and practical goals like extending life expectancy, increasing food production to feed the starving, and enabling global communication. Philosophy of science attempts to account for both of these kinds of success, often relying on the epistemic virtues of science to explain its practical success.

Scientific theories, the traditional view goes, have enabled technological and practical achievements because they are highly justified, true, or at least approximately true.

Epistemic holists1 argue that part of what it means for a theory to be justified is for it to be practically successful. Different forms of holism argue for different epistemic roles for moral, political, and practical values. Underdetermination arguments attempt to show that there are always many competing interpretations of the evidence available (Kuhn 1962; Laudan 1990;

Longino 1979; Quine 1951). Because any body of evidence can always be interpreted as supporting several mutually inconsistent hypotheses, the argument goes, only values can decide which hypothesis ought to be believed. Pluralists take a slightly different tack, arguing that many hypothesis can be true of the same phenomena (Giere 1999; Kitcher 2001; Putnam 1981). They do see values as playing a similar role in determining which of the many true theories ought to be

1 I use 'epistemic holism' to denote any epistemology that treats moral and practical values as necessary for making epistemic judgments about the justification of scientific theories (E.g., Kitcher 2001; 2011a; Laudan 1984; Longino 1990; 2002a; Rudner 1953). As this chapter develops, the position is clarified and various forms of epistemic holism are described and distinguished from one another.

11 accepted, however. On both views, values influence theory choice when several theories are supported by the evidence.

More recently, social epistemologists have argued that values not only select between alternative theories, they are necessary for maintaining a productive scientific community

(Haraway 1988; Longino 1990; 2002a; Solomon 2001; Wylie 2003). Although science has often explicitly discouraged value judgments in assessing the epistemic justification of a hypothesis, they point out, scientists have often been implicitly biased by their values. The exclusion of women and racial minorities from scientific discourse in the past, for example, has led to widespread acceptance of sexist and racist assumptions which, in turn, have influenced the theories produced by these communities (Haraway 1988; Longino 1990; Wylie 2003). The best way to eliminate such biases, they argue, is to promote diversity in the scientific community.

Because scientists are often unaware of their implicit biases, they are unable to repress the influence of value biases on their own. Only after their views have been exposed to criticism from others can the implicit biases be revealed. Having a diverse scientific community, one that contains scientists with many different value commitments, ensures that the idiosyncratic biases of a few do not monopolize scientific thinking. Eliminating bias from scientific theories, these social epistemologists argue, requires encouraging scientists to evaluate scientific claims in light of their values rather than suppressing value influences. While scientists have long tried to quash the effects of their value judgments, the history of science shows that individuals often fail to do so. Responsibility therefore falls to the broader community to eliminate these biases through critical interaction between scientists with different points of view.

12 Holists are sometimes accused of embracing radical epistemic relativism, the view that what counts as scientific knowledge is whatever satisfies the standards of some individual person or community no matter how arbitrary or absurd those epistemic standards may be (Gross and

Levitt 1994; Haack 1998). Epistemic relativism with regard to science replaces the empirical justification of scientific theories with whatever opinion an individual or culture prefers. On this

“anything goes” critique, epistemic holism abandons the pursuit of truth by subjecting scientific justification to the moral, political, and practical desires of individuals or societies. If the justification of scientific hypotheses is relative to personal or cultural values, the argument goes, science is doomed to become a collection of subjective or cultural opinions rather than a body of objective facts.

In philosophy of science, holism sometimes addresses the semantics of scientific theories, the justification of theories, or the process of scientific change and progress. I am primarily concerned with epistemic holism, which claims that evaluative beliefs in part justify empirical or factual beliefs. Other forms of holism are systematically related to this epistemic project and often evoke the same kinds of traditional concerns. Kuhn's (1962) holistic account of scientific progress, for instance, describes revolutionary periods where changes in theories, epistemic standards, and goals occur all at once. On his account, science does not always progress by merely accepting theories that satisfy our epistemic standards; the standards themselves sometimes change along with the theories. One critique of his holism points out that during these revolutionary periods, it appears that anything goes (Laudan 1984, 17-20). Without a principled means of settling disputes, universal epistemic standards to adjudicate between rival views,

13 scientists are free to adopt whatever epistemic standards and theories they prefer. Each view

“will be shown to satisfy more or less the criteria that it dictates for itself and to fall short of those dictate by its opponents” (Kuhn 1962, 109-110). During revolutionary periods of scientific change scientists are free to adopt whichever epistemic standards support their preferred theories.

That is one way, among several, of motivating an anything goes critique of Kuhn's holism.

Kuhn's work focuses on historical periods of scientific change and is somewhat removed from the moral, political, and practical issues epistemic holists are concerned with today.

Although Kuhn pointed out that scientists are often influenced by the idiosycrasies of their personal or culturally acquired beliefs, for example, he often used these observations to show not that values justify beliefs, but that scientists' beliefs are in some way subjective or culturally relative. When pressed to defend the claim that values can influence epistemic standards without degenerating into anything goes relativism, however, Kuhn articulates the role of values like simplicity, precision, and breadth of explanatory scope in science (Kuhn 1977, chapter 13). All things being equal, we prefer simple theories to complex ones, precise theories over the imprecise, and theories that explain more phenomena rather than fewer. Some argue that these cognitive or epistemic values play a legitimate role in assessing scientific theories that moral, practical, and political values do not (Koertge 2000, S48; Lacey 1999). Theories that explain more evidence, describe facts more precisely, and do not add complexity beyond necessity may simply be closer to the truth than narrow, imprecise, or complicated alternatives. On that reading, cognitive values are epistemic values because they increase the likelihood of a theory's truth.

Some holists consider these values cognitive rather than epistemic because they are

14 features of theories that promote ease of use in our cognitive reasoning. Simplicity and breadth of scope may be features that our cognitive capacities demand rather than attributes of truth and reality (Laudan 1984, chapter 3). Simplicity and generality are seen as instrumental values that promote ease of cognitive use rather than epistemic values that promote truth. Many holists have rejected the distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic values by arguing that theoretical simplicity, precision, and breadth are instrumentally valuable for attaining non-epistemic goals rather than truth (Daston and Galison 2007, 41; Longino 1996; Machamer and Douglas 1999).

The most controversial holists, feminist philosophers of science, sociologists of science, and social epistemologists advocate the epistemic legitimacy of moral, political, and practical values in justifying scientific theories. These values are non-cognitive. While most philosophers agree that cognitive values are important for scientific theorizing, even if they disagree about their epistemic status, non-cognitive values remain highly controversial epistemic influences.

Section 1.1 gives a general overview of the division between epistemic holists and traditional philosophy of science. I sketch three problems for holism that contribute to the claim that it entails anything goes relativism, demonstrating why holism is vulnerable to two of those problems. The motivational problem requires an argument to establish that non-cognitive values justify theories rather than simply biasing scientists. The problem of evidential ignorance points out that holism should not justify theories that contradict or ignore empirical evidence, as anything goes relativism does. I contend that the most common arguments for holism, underdetermination arguments, rarely justify evidential ignorance.

Finally, I argue that not all values can justify scientific claims equally because that kind

15 of holism relativizes scientific justification to subjective preferences. If conflicting values justify conflicting theories, what is justified for one person is not justified for another, which undermines the objectivity of science. Any epistemology that treats all values as equal epistemic influences runs afoul of what I call the equal legitimacy problem. While underdetermination arguments do not entail an anything goes picture of scientific justification, they nevertheless fail to motivate an epistemic role for non-cognitive values and, furthermore, treat all moral, political, and practical values as equally legitimate.

Section 1.2 considers the most popular contemporary form of epistemic holism in social epistemology (Longino 1990; 2002a; Solomon 2001). For social holists, scientific communities with diverse and conflicting values among its members are more likely to produce objective scientific theories than communities with homogenous value commitments or those that attempt to rid science of value judgments entirely. I conclude by introducing the concern, raised by traditionalists and holists alike, that social epistemologists' pleas for diversity of values in the scientific community runs afoul of the equal legitimacy problem by treating all values as equally legitimate epistemic influences.

1.1 Three Problems for Holism

1.1.1 The Motivational Problem

The instrumental successes of science may be moral, political, or practical in nature.

Those successes reflect our values and desires – an instrumentally valuable theory is one that allows us to achieve goals, satisfy desires, and promote values. The philosophical community is

16 deeply divided on the role of such values in scientific inquiry, however, because they are traditionally seen as a source of bias that frustrates the epistemic goals of science. The traditional view stresses the importance of isolating factual claims from the influence of values in order to avoid such biases. Against this tradition, epistemic holists have argued that the knowledge science produces is justified in part by underlying moral, political, and practical commitments

(Kuhn 1962; Laudan 1984; Longino 1990; 2002a; Rudner 1953).

Traditional epistemologists contend that value commitments are problematic for science.

Values are seen as subjective biases that violate the imperative of disinterested truth-seeking

(Almeder 2003; Gross and Levitt 1994; Haack 1998; Koertge 2000). Philosophers of science have traditionally focused on justificatory relationships between evidence and theories, especially on logical rules for establishing evidential support (Hempel 1965; Popper 1959). The goal of these accounts is to establish epistemic standards that hold for all scientific contexts; they are general prescriptions for how scientists can achieve high levels of justification.

The moralistic fallacy holds that values can not justify factual claims because values, unlike evidence, tell us nothing about the natural world (Davis 1978). Goals and desires can, however, be powerful psychological influences. People often believe the things they would like to be true. We may be tempted to accept the theory that satisfies our interests the most, but the benefits of a belief do not attest to its truth (Sober 2007, 114-15). Traditionalists draw a distinction between the “context of discovery” and the “context of justification” to differentiate between the psychological influence values may exert over individuals and the epistemic notion of justification (cf. Schickore and Steinle 2006). Their value-free epistemology does not require

17 absolute value-freedom in scientific practice. In the context of discovery, value biases might cause a scientist to accept a theory, but that does not justify their decision. In the context of justification, what matters is whether or not scientists have good reasons for accepting a theory.

To claim that causes of belief acceptance are justificatory reasons for belief is to commit what

Susan Haack calls the “passes for” fallacy (Haack 1998, 93). Beliefs caused by values merely pass for truth in the eyes of their subjects. Holistic accounts of science, Haack contends, confuse values that cause beliefs with justifying reasons for belief. The “passes for” fallacy is just a reformulation of the moralistic fallacy, the claim that value commitments cannot justify empirical claims.

If epistemic holism is a plausible account of scientific reasoning, the idea that values could legitimately justify factual claims needs to be motivated. Many traditional responses to holism merely point out the difference between causes and reasons, acceptance and justification, because holists often fail to motivate holism. If values are genuinely epistemic, holists must establish that the instrumental ability of theories to realize our goals provides a legitimate reason to believe those theories, not merely a psychological bias toward believing them. Because values are sometimes bad reasons for belief, reflecting merely our subjective desires, tradition rejects any legitimate role for values in the epistemology of science. Holists must therefore demonstrate that values can be positive epistemic influences rather than just psychological causes of belief. I call this the motivational problem for holism.

18 1.1.2 Evidential Ignorance and Underdetermination

Once an epistemic role for values is motivated, holists must avoid the problems of epistemic relativism. Because values can sometimes play a biasing role in the assessment of theories, leading scientists to accept hypotheses they would like to be true, traditionalists worry that value-laden science will ultimately become a relativistic free-for-all where scientists are entitled to believe whatever is convenient, regardless of the evidence (Gross and Levitt 1994;

Haack 1998, 93, 110-112). Value-laden science, they worry, is an “anything goes” affair. The thought is that if values can justify beliefs, they will displace empirical observations, encouraging scientists to rely on values rather than supporting evidence in order to justify any theory they want. If values can justify beliefs, why bother to collect evidence? Epistemic holism faces the problem of evidential ignorance if values are allowed to trump empirical evidence.

Traditionalists worry that by allowing non-epistemic values to affect how scientists assess the justification of a theory, holists abandon the search for truth. Empirical evidence is undeniably central to scientists' search for truth, but holists contend that evidence is insufficient to justify theories, not irrelevant. If evidence does not logically entail which theories are true and which are false, if multiple theories are consistent with a logical interpretation of the evidence, then there is an epistemic gap between evidence and theory. As long as there is a gap between evidence and theory, some other source of justification must fill that gap. Underdetermination arguments purport to show that evidence does not determine which theory is true, or what theory should be accepted as true, because there are multiple rational interpretations of the available evidence (Kuhn 1962; Laudan 1990; Longino 1979; Quine 1951). Many holists argue that

19 underdetermination motivates and requires value judgments in theory choice without advocating the irrelevance of evidence to justification (Laudan 1984; 1990; Longino 1990; Shapin and

Schaffer 1985). Holists argue that multiple theories are consistent with a rational interpretation of evidence, meeting the traditional epistemic standards of science, not that evidence can be ignored or that traditional epistemic standards are irrelevant to science.

Consider some of the empirical evidence invoked in favor of a Geo-centric cosmology2.

Geo-centrists observed that heavy bodies fall strait down, but reasoned that if the earth is in constant motion it must move beneath falling objects (Feyerabend 1975, 26-7). A rock dropped from a tower, for instance, should land some distance from the towers base if the earth moves beneath the stone while falling. Because falling bodies do not land far from the point at which they are dropped, Geo-centrists saw evidence for the claim that Earth is at rest. Since the earth does not move beneath flying or falling objects, it must not be moving at all. From a modern perspective, we see that the rock travels along with the earth, but that interpretation of the evidence requires substantial background assumptions about relative motion. Given the Geo- centrists' background assumption about the implications of terrestrial motion, falling bodies constituted empirical evidence for a stationary Earth. The problem is that evidence may be interpreted different ways depending on the background assumptions adopted (Longino 1979).

Empirical observations do not indicate which theories they are evidence for. Some

2 This example is only meant to demonstrate the possibility of interpreting one body of evidence as supporting several mutually exclusive theories, not to provide a thorough account of the reasons offered for or against adopting geo-centrism, which included: it's relative simplicity, it's elimination of the Ptolemaic distinction between inferior and superior planets, it's inconsistency with Aristotelian theory, and the lack of observed stellar parallax.

20 observations seem to support conflicting theories, depending on the background assumptions that inform them. Quine claimed that if one is willing to change enough background assumptions, any theory at all may be justified in light of any evidence (Quine 1951, 43). A naive reading of

Quine's underdetermination suggests an anything goes view where all theories are equally justified. Other holists have distinguished between Quine's radical underdetermination and weaker underdetermination claims. Larry Laudan argues that there are “indefinitely many mutually contrary theories” supported by any body of evidence, not that any theory at all can be supported by any body of evidence (Laudan 1990, 271). There may be many theories consistent with the evidence, according to Laudan, but not every theory is equally justified because some background assumptions are more justified than others. Others limit the number of background assumptions it is rational to revise, restricting the number of theories it would be rational to accept in contexts of underdetermination (Gillies 1993; Longino 1990, 51-52).

One way to limit the number of theories consistent with the evidence is to invoke background assumptions about cognitive values. Complex reinterpretations of evidence may be logically consistent with the evidence but they do not accord with the demand for simplicity.

Cognitive values were central to the assessment of Geo-centric and helio-centric theories, for example, although they did come into conflict. Ptolemy's Geo-centrism made more accurate predictions and was consistent with many of the Aristotelian assumptions of the time, while

Copernicus' helio-centrism had a much simpler description of planetary orbits (Kuhn 1962, 68)3.

Rather than trying to make sense of the seemingly erratic motions of other planets relative to 3 That is Kuhn's contention, anyway. Others point out that while the helio-centric model eventually eliminated planetary epicycles, thereby simplifying the geo-centric system, the theory Copernicus himself defended did not posit significantly fewer epicycles than its Ptolemaic rival (Kitcher 1993, 206).

21 earth, helio-centrism posited simple elliptical orbits relative to the sun. Kuhn argues cognitive values could not decide between these two theories because each theory had its own epistemic virtues. Still, underdetermination does not require ignoring all standards for evidential interpretation. Though some radical forms of holism may imply anything goes relativism, others take empirical, logical, and cognitive considerations to be important to, though not fully determinative of, scientific justification.

For an underdetermination example that involves non-cognitive values, consider the evidential poverty of archaeology, a scientific enterprise that offers theories based on severely limited bodies of evidence. Archaeologists can only access materials that have survived the passage of time and are relatively easy to excavate. Despite these evidential limitations, speculative theories about ancient history are proposed and evaluated, like theories regarding the origins of human tool-making (Longino and Doell 1983). The dominant theory was that men first created and used primitive tools in hunting and butchering. Because the earliest discovered stone tools are chipped into shape, convenient for holding, and found in high concentrations, it is clear that they are intentionally created tools, but it is less clear who used them and for what purposes.

“The stones could have been used to kill animals, scrape pelts, section corpses, dig up roots, break open seed pods, or hammer and soften tough roots and leaves to prepare them for consumption” (ibid., 215).

Why have some concluded that men developed these tools? Longino and Doell point to various assumptions about gender roles that influence scientists' interpretations of the evidence.

On the assumption that men are intellectually superior to women, men are more likely to have

22 produced technological advancements. But the bias goes both ways. Feminist theories “portray females as innovators who contributed more than males to the development of such allegedly human characteristics” (ibid., 213). Scientists biased toward male-centered perspectives see hunting tools for men while those with feminist values see tools used by women for gathering.

There is no evidence available that would determine who used these tools or for what purpose, however. What this example shows is that the traditional epistemological standards of evidence cannot tell us which of these theories to adopt. In the absence of deciding evidence, moral or political assumptions about the importance of gender influence archeologists' assessment of these theories. Underdetermination arguments show that values influence scientists' decision to accept one hypothesis over another. Whether such influences are genuinely epistemic or merely biasing is another question.

Nothing about this argument turns on scientists ignoring evidence. The archeological example merely indicates that two incompatible theories are both consistent with a rational interpretation of the evidence. Archeologists do not, for instance, deny that the objects studied are tools or claim that they were made by non-humans. Moderate underdetermination theses acknowledge that evidence is central to scientific justification, not something to be ignored, and that some interpretations of the evidence are more rational than others (Gillies 1993; Laudan

1990). Though traditionalists worry that values might supplant evidence if they are given epistemic legitimacy, the underdetermination argument shows that values are intended to supplement evidence rather than override it.

Disputes about terrestrial motion and the development of human tool use are meant to

23 show that in some cases of scientific disagreement empirical evidence alone has proven insufficient to decide between competing theories. Kuhn's argument for holism turns almost entirely on the historical fact of underdetermination cases. Because scientists adopt theories that are underdetermined, Kuhn argues that philosophers have failed to account for all the reasons scientists have for adopting theories (Kuhn 1962, chapter 1). If evidence is commonly insufficient to decide between scientific theories, traditional epistemology does not live up to the actual epistemic standards of practicing scientists, and perhaps more importantly, science does not live up to the evidence-only standards of traditional philosophers (Longino 1990, 65). A satisfactory account of scientific justification must, therefore, consider more than mere evidence because evidence has not proven sufficient to justify many of the important theoretical advancements in the history of science.

Underdetermination arguments do not, however, address the motivational problem. They show that values are ineliminable from scientific reasoning, that they cause beliefs in the context of discovery, not that they are legitimate reasons for belief in the context of justification. The historical fact that scientists have been influenced by their values, even in the best cases of theory choice, does not show that values are epistemic or justifying factors. It merely shows that important theoretical decisions have in fact been affected by scientists' value commitments.

Holists must show that values play some important role in evaluating the epistemic justification of a theory, not merely influencing the beliefs of individual scientists. Scientists sometimes unjustifiably believe what they would like to be true. Underdetermination arguments provide no support for the claim that values justify beliefs rather than merely causing them. Properly

24 constrained, however, underdetermination arguments do show that holism is not committed to anything goes relativism or evidential ignorance. For most contemporary holists, evidence is a primary source of justification while values are secondary or supplemental to evidence.

1.1.3 Equal Legitimacy of Values

There are two problems holism can run afoul of that jointly entail anything goes relativism. One aspect of the problem involves ignoring empirical evidence, which no acceptable account of scientific justification can endorse. The second issue concerns the epistemic legitimacy of opposing values. If all values are equally legitimate background assumptions, they provide equally legitimate reasons to interpret evidence in conflicting ways. Given two conflicting theories that satisfy the empirical evidence, scientists are more justified in accepting the theory that satisfies their values, but when two scientists adopt conflicting values their justification is relative to their individual preferences. Scientists will be differently justified in accepting different theories of the same phenomena; what is more justified for one scientist is less justified for another. On its own, the equal legitimacy of values does not promote anything goes relativism. Equal legitimacy does not justify evidential ignorance, but on the assumption that values are genuinely epistemic influences, the equal legitimacy of values does grant scientists a license to adopt subjectively preferred theories that accommodated the evidence. The justification of a theory is relative, in part, to the subjective value preferences of individuals.

The problem is that science is an inquiry into the objective structure of the natural world, structures that are supposed to be the same for everyone. Scientific truths are supposed to hold

25 independent of individual idiosyncrasies because the natural world is independent of subjective opinion. When scientists inquiry into some fact, their justification, like the facts they wish to discover, should not vary across individuals or societies. One reason to reject epistemic holism is that it seems to imply that different theories are differentially justified for individuals with different values. Given that empirical questions have answers which are the same for everyone and that science pursues those answers, scientific justification should be objective in the sense of being the same for everyone, not relative to individual or social preferences. If all values are equally legitimate epistemic influences and different values support different theories, scientific justification becomes relative to mere preference. Epistemic holists must therefore avoid commitment to the equal legitimacy of conflicting values in order to avoid relativizing scientific justification to the preferences of an individual or community.

Philosophy of science in the wake of logical positivism largely viewed values as arbitrary subjective opinions, not claims that can be subject to evidential scrutiny (Carnap 1935;

Putnam 1990, 144-47). Values were seen, like a preference for chocolate or vanilla ice cream, as arbitrary matters of taste. The notion that scientific objectivity requires leaving our value commitments at the door is popular in part due to the tremendous influence of the view that values are not only unjustified, but in principle unjustifiable by any empirical evidence.

Unjustified claims are not epistemic; they do not serve as reasons for belief. No argument can justify its conclusion with an unjustified premise. Thus some traditionalists see moral and practical values as non-epistemic because they are unjustified and in principle unjustifiable.

Some holist critiques of the traditional view of science emphasize the extent to which

26 scientists' theoretical beliefs and epistemic standards have been, and continue to be, biased by subjective preferences and cultural upbringing (Kuhn 1962; Longino 1990; Wylie and Nelson

2007). By offering case studies of cultural or individual bias in the history of science, they argue scientific practice betrays the epistemic pretensions of traditionalist philosophers. Value-free, unbiased science is taken to be an illusory ideal that crumbles beneath the weight of example after example of biased science. Scientific standards are depicted as products of not just rigorous philosophical analysis, but sociological and psychological influences. The arbitrary and biasing influence of values is thus central to these holists' account of science.

Other holists (Anderson 1995; Intemann 2008; Kitcher 2011a; Laudan 1984) worry that treating values as irrational or arbitrary influences undermines the holist contention that values ought to play an epistemic role in science. They believe the portrayal of all values as subjective or cultural biases plays into traditionalists' hand. For traditionalists, the arbitrary nature of values is not problematic because values do not justify scientific claims. For holists, however, the equal epistemic legitimacy of values results in an epistemic relativism where the justification of theories turns on the subjective preference of individual scientists.

Some have argued that holist science is doomed to become a kind of political brokering between competing interest groups with different values (Kitcher 1993, 7; Koertge 2000). Nazi science and theories based on religious ideology, they argue, might become legitimate scientific programs if holism legitimates value-laden epistemology (Clough and Loges 2008; Goldman

2002; Intemann 2008). If all values are equally legitimate reasons for belief, Nazis and creationists can bring their values to the scientific arena because their values must be as

27 epistemically significant as anyone else's. Value-laden science seems innocuous enough so long as scientists adopt values we find agreeable, values like curing the sick and feeding the hungry, but not all values are so benevolent. Some values are downright abhorrent.

The problem with equal legitimacy is that when scientists have opposing value commitments and therefore disagree about which theories are most justified, they lack any way to adjudicate between rival values. With no way to decide between competing values, scientists are left without a principled means of settling theoretical disputes. Science is bound to terminate in irresolvable theoretical disagreements because the underlying value claims are irresolvable.

One person is justified in believing the world is one way while others are justified in their belief that the world is fundamentally different. The equal legitimacy problem raises concerns for holism because it makes epistemic justification dependent on arbitrary assumptions, claims that are in principle irresolvable. Scientific justification should not be subjectively relative because the world scientific theories are meant to represent is not subjectively relative. Widespread and irresolvable disagreement is not only a practical problem for science, it violates the conviction, shared by most philosophers, that reality and our knowledge claims about it are not relative to arbitrary opinions. If values justify scientific claims, not all values can be equally justified epistemic influences, some values must be more legitimate than others.

Some varieties of holism, like Kuhn's account of scientific progress and Quine's confirmational holism, are susceptible to accusations of anything goes relativism. Because their accounts of epistemic standards can be construed as arbitrary, scientists may adopt any theory for any reason, no matter what the available evidence is. Any value, goal, or desire can justify

28 theories and evidence can either be ignored or so drastically reinterpreted that any theory can be justified no matter what the evidence says. Contemporary holism is more nuanced, according evidence a primary role in the epistemology of science. Underdetermination arguments are meant to show that values affect theory choices, not that evidence is irrelevant to those choices.

Underdetermination arguments do not motivate an epistemic role for values, however. They merely the demonstrate the arbitrary causal influence of values on scientists' actual theory choices. Motivating epistemic holism without running afoul of the equal legitimacy of values problem has proven to be a formidable task.

1.2 Diversity and Equal Legitimacy

1.2.1 Social Epistemology

Social epistemologists (Haraway 1988; Longino 1990; 2002a; Solomon 2001; Wylie

2003) have argued that scientific communities with diverse value commitments are less likely to produce theories biased by idiosyncratic values. This motivates an indirect social role for values while conceding that values are negative epistemic influences in their direct role as psychological causes of belief. On that view, all values are equally legitimate because all values contribute to diversity. The remainder of this chapter examines the problem of equal legitimacy as it applies to holism motivated by social epistemology and, in particular, Helen Longino's

(1990; 2002a) attempts to avoid that problem. I argue that because Longino is unwilling to declare some values objectively superior to others, she has no principled way of limiting the range of values which contribute to diversity. By arguing that inter-community disagreements

29 about values expose and eliminate the biases values cause in the context of discovery, social epistemologists exacerbate concerns about equal legitimacy. If disagreement on values is all that is needed, anybody's values are epistemically legitimate so long as they disagree with other value commitments in that community. Furthermore, social epistemologists' goal of eliminating value biases at the social level betrays a commitment to the ideal of value-free science.

Social epistemology consists of a robust collection of epistemological considerations, but the focus of this section is the epistemic role social epistemologists ascribe to values in theoretical justification. Some social epistemological issues include authoritative testimony, social reward systems, and avenues of public criticism. None of these factors can be thought of in terms of individuals' justifying reasons for belief, but they are important for developing highly justified theories. Traditional epistemology is concerned with individuals' empirical justification.

Social epistemology emphasizes the ways in which the social organization of scientific inquiry can affect the epistemic success of science. Lay persons and expert scientists alike, for instance, often rely on the testimony of others. Scientists do not work in isolation; much of their information comes from teachers, colleagues, and other experts. Testimony from experts is an important source of evidence, but who qualifies as an expert? The epistemic legitimacy of our dependence on testimony crucially relies on the ability of universities, journals, and other scientific institutions to correctly identify genuinely qualified experts (Goldman 2011; Kitcher

1993, 314-16). The epistemic legitimacy of relying on expert testimony turns on the efficacy of social practices that cannot be addressed by traditional epistemologies concerned with individuals' empirical justification. By ensuring that the right people make it into positions of

30 epistemic authority, social institutions can increase the likelihood that scientists will produce justified claims. Justification is not just a relationship between individuals and empirical evidence, it also involves social relationships between individual scientists.

Nothing about social epistemology implies an epistemic role for values and not all social theorists embrace non-cognitive values as epistemic (Goldman 1999; Hull 1988; Kitcher 1993).

Alvin Goldman (2002), a pioneering and prolific social epistemologist, raises many of the traditional concerns about values in social epistemology. The social epistemologists that do embrace epistemic holism argue that diversity in value commitments will lead to more objective science. “[T]he greater the number of different points of view included in a community, the more likely it is that its scientific practice will be objective” (Longino 1990, 80). Appeals to diversity are frequent in social models of feminist epistemology as well (Crasnow 2008; Haraway 1988;

Wylie 2003). Diversity of value commitments is a social level property overlooked by epistemologies that focus on individuals' justifying reasons, but social epistemologists argue that diverse communities are epistemically advantageous.

Miriam Solomon's social epistemology makes a radical argument for diversity by explicitly claiming that all value biases are equally epistemic (Solomon 2001, 141-42). She examines various historical episodes of widespread disagreement in the scientific community in order to show that diversity and dissent are epistemically desirable in science (ibid., chapter 5).

She attributes the success of several revolutionary advancements in science to what she calls

“good distribution of research effort” between different perspectives (ibid., 68-91). After

Darwin's The Origin of Species, for example, biologists were motivated by both empirical

31 evidence and value biases. Though commitment to the values of conservative Christianity caused some to reject evolution, Darwin was influenced by his biases against religious thought, according to Solomon (ibid., 70). Others were motivated to accept the theory of evolution because it accorded with the political ideals of capitalism. Where competition and survival of the economically successful are key to capitalist theories, evolution similarly cites competition and survival of the biologically successful. Thus political commitments influenced the assessment of evolutionary theory (ibid., 71).

Because the biological debates concerning Darwin's theory were not resolvable by appeal to empirical evidence alone, different people had different non-empirical reasons for accepting or rejecting it. The diversity of theoretical perspectives increased the epistemic virtue of the scientific community because the rival theories were equally viable and in need of further investigation. A less diverse set of theoretical alternatives would not have produced such epistemically valuable results. The distribution of research effort was divided among Darwinian, neo-Lamarckian, orthogenic, and saltationist perspectives in part because political and religious values affected the assessment of those theories, so for Solomon the influence of values is epistemically salient because it contributes to the diversity of theories investigated. By researching various viable alternatives, scientists are more likely to falsify bad theories, revise them in light of diverse criticism, or find additional evidence for theories that may be unpopular outliers in the scientific community.

On Solomon's account, any value commitment whatsoever is epistemically legitimate just because it increases diversity. The optimal state for a scientific community is an equitable

32 distribution of value commitments where every value is represented equally (ibid., 117-118, 148-

151). Even if values do not directly justify theory choices, having an equitable diversity of values ensures that all theoretical and methodological possibilities are explored with equal rigor. Given that values are ineliminable from individual scientists' reasoning, as historical studies of scientific discovery taken to have shown, a diversity of value commitments prevents scientific communities from pursuing only a narrow subset of the evidentially supported theories.

Solomon reasons that because all underdetermined theories are equally supported by the evidence, the scientific community must give equal consideration to every plausible alternative.

While some theories may be informed by values we do not agree with, the differences are evaluative rather than empirical. A particular scientists may accept or reject hypotheses for non- empirical reasons, but every theory supported by the evidence should be given equal consideration by the community as a whole. By promoting a diversity of theories, the scientific community guards against overlooking plausible alternatives for non-empirical reasons.

Solomon's proposal is unapologetically immoderate because it accepts the equal legitimacy of any value claim consistent with the evidence4. Even religious values are described as legitimate epistemic influences for accepting or rejecting biological theories. The pressing question for

Solomon is how different values can justify conflicting theory choices. If Christian and atheistic values are equally legitimate epistemic reasons for belief, what are we to make of the fact that non-evolutionary theories are justified for the religious while evolutionary theories are justified

4 Social epistemologists like Solomon might argue that some values are simply inconsistent with the evidence. Sexists and racists may, for example, be verifiably wrong in assuming that men are superior to women, or that one race is superior to another. Chapter 2 (Section 2.2.3) will argue that a commitment to underdetermination and the epistemic value of diversity undermines that strategy for avoiding equal legitimacy problems.

33 for others? Justification, it appears, is relative to an individual's values so that what is justified for one person is unjustified for another.

Social epistemologists will worry that my analysis of justification focuses too narrowly on individuals rather than social groups. Perhaps justification can be understood as reasons the community has for accepting a hypotheses rather than reasons had by individuals. On Solomon's account, however, the scientific community is required to accept as justified any hypothesis supported by the evidence, and the community must reject any theory that is not empirically supported. Only empirical evidence can lead the scientific community to accept a theory as a candidate for individuals' belief (ibid., 134-135). Non-empirical factors like values serve as reasons for belief for individual scientists when choosing between several empirically supported theories, but at the social level the acceptability of a hypothesis depends only on the empirical evidence. The scientific community as a whole is not allowed to accept or reject theories on the basis of value commitments; the community remains neutral by tolerating all values. Values only influence individuals' decision to accept or reject theories. Thus, from a social perspective, values do not affect the justification of theories at all. Values only affect theory choices at the individual level, where the equal legitimacy of values raises concerns about how different theories could be more justified for one scientist than another.

As Solomon admits, most proponents of values in science appeal to social epistemology and dissent to correct the biases of individual scientists, rather than arguing for the epistemic significance of any values at all (ibid., 139). Unlike Solomon, Longino sees in social epistemology an opportunity to moderate which values are considered legitimate. Just as social

34 epistemology emphasizes the importance of public avenues for critical analysis of scientific theories, scientists' value commitments can also be questioned. After serious consideration in a diverse and critical community, some values, goals, and perspectives may be rejected as unscientific. While Longino does not treat all values as equally legitimate, however, the same appeal to diversity grounds her argument for the epistemic legitimacy of values: Value diversity, a property of social groups rather than individual agents, produces objective science in a way that a homogenous society of like-minded agents cannot.5 Longino's account of value-laden social epistemology is the most discussed, nuanced, and well-developed social theory of epistemic holism. It has been criticized by many, and in response Longino has developed the theory into a comprehensive account of value-laden science that attempts to negotiate many of the problems posed by traditional epistemology.

1.2.2 Longino's Social Epistemology

To motivate a role for values in science Longino appeals to the underdetermination argument, contending that values are ineliminable from our epistemic practices. The primary source of justification, however, is empirical evidence. Both values and social considerations are meant to supplement evidence in epistemic contexts, to determine theory choices after evidence has been exhausted. Consistency with observational evidence is a universal standard for the sciences (Longino 2002a, 185). Complicating that standard is Longino's contention that across

5 Longino does introduce competing conceptions of objectivity. In one sense, the objectivity of theories is “secured... by intersubjective criticism” (1990, 75). Longino promotes an alternative conception, however, that attributes objectivity to the process of scientific inquiry rather than the theories it produces (ibid., 74). On that view, diversity in part constitutes objectivity rather than promoting it.

35 different scientific fields and research methodologies, there are different standards for collecting and assessing evidence. Physics, chemistry, and biology must all establish their own specific research methodologies, evidential standards, and epistemic norms for their field. Nothing about this view, however, advocates ignoring evidence or replacing evidence with bare ideology.

“Indeed, it presupposes basic empiricism and logical norms... it proposes to add to those norms traditionally studied by philosophers” (ibid., 139).

The other universal epistemological standards Longino promotes are social requirements; standards for the organization of scientific communities. These standards play two important roles in Longino's theory. Not only are they universal epistemic norms that ensure the objectivity of science, they also apply to the values scientists may legitimately adopt. “Satisfaction of these norms assures that theories and hypotheses accepted in the community will not incorporate the idiosyncratic biases (heuristic or social) of an individual or subgroup” (ibid., 134). “Social interactions determine what values remain encoded in inquiry and which are eliminated”

(Longino 1990, 216). Social epistemological standards are intended to undermine the equal legitimacy of all values by ensuring that some values are eliminated from the scientific community. If Longino's social epistemology overcomes the equal legitimacy problem and successfully wards off concerns about radically conflicting religious, political, and moral values, one of the major hurdles to epistemic holism is disposed of.

The first social requirement for scientific communities is public venues for criticism.

Academic journals and conferences are two such venues where evidence, research methods, values, and theories can be evaluated and criticized by other scientists (Longino 2002a, 129).

36 This ensures that value commitments are subjected to criticism from dissenting perspectives in public forums in the same way that scientific theories are. The second requirement is uptake of criticism: “The community must not merely tolerate dissent, but its beliefs and theories must change over time in response” (ibid., 129-130). Public venues for criticism must be more than mere pretense, there must be genuine interaction between dissenting viewpoints.

Although the epistemic standards and values of science will change over time as a result of uptake of public criticism, they should still be publicly recognized. The third recommendation for the organization of scientific communities requires shared public standards at any given time, ensuring that individuals adopt standards and values that have survived criticism and been accepted by the community. Highly justified scientific theories are not produced by scientists that merely adopt their own preferred methods and goals. They might advocate their views in public venues for criticism, and other community members must consider them and respond, but scientists need not capitulate. If critical interaction is to promote progress and revision of scientific beliefs, those who disagree must appeal to shared standards of analysis. The requirement of shared standards is minimal, however. Consistency with empirical evidence is the only necessary standard. Beyond that, scientists need only agree on some standard that can be appealed to as a means of deciding particular disagreements (Longino 1990, 77). Consensus need not be universal or even widespread, it only needs to serve as a means of settling disputes between individuals.

Finally, Longino calls for tempered equality of intellectual authority. Equality of intellectual authority is meant to ensure that no individuals or social groups are unfairly excluded

37 from the scientific community. Absolute equality is too demanding because not everyone is intellectually equal, either naturally or with respect to educational background and training, but science should not be exclusively practiced by the genius or privileged (Longino 2002a, 131). As a moral or political ideal, tempered equality of authority is commendable, but it is meant as an epistemic requirement that promotes the objectivity of science. Why think that treating scientists as equally qualified or authoritative is epistemic?

Here Longino appeals to the social utility of diversity in scientific communities. Equality of intellectual authority promotes a broad range of perspectives from which theories, methods, and values can be criticized (ibid., 131-32). Longino identifies different perspectives with different sets of background assumptions (1990, 78-79). The role of background assumptions in

Longino's epistemology is the same as in underdetermination arguments: they influence interpretations of evidence when theory choice is underdetermined by that evidence (Longino

1990, Chapter 3). Background assumptions about values are the focus of Science as Social

Knowledge and Longino takes her underdetermination argument to show that “[s]ince contextually located background assumptions play a role in confirmation as well as in discovery, scientific inquiry is, thus, at least in principle, permeable by values and interests” (ibid., 13).

Longino motivates an epistemic role for values by appealing to the epistemic benefits of diversity and pointing out that values contribute to perspectival diversity. Because background assumptions about values will inevitably influence individual scientists' reasoning, a diverse community with many different values will be able to critically examine the background value assumptions of individual scientists in order to ensure that racist or sexist values, for example, do

38 not monopolize scientific thinking (Longino 1990, 78-81; 2002a, 132).

Absolute equality of intellectual authority raises concerns about the equal legitimacy of all perspectives, but tempered equality allows some perspectives to be rejected by the community. Avoiding equal legitimacy problems in Longino's theory requires spelling out exactly who counts as an intellectual or authoritative equal and who does not. The question is whose perspective and whose values are legitimate? “It makes us ask who constitutes the 'we' for any given group, and what the criteria are for providing an answer.... The social approach to scientific knowledge places such questions at the center of philosophy of science” (Longino

2002a, 134). Unfortunately, Longino offers little by way of answers to these questions. If the requirement of tempered equality is to eliminate undesirable ideologues from legitimate participation in scientific communities, it is not obvious how.

Collectively, Longino's social constraints guarantee uptake of public criticism from diverse but somewhat equally legitimate perspectives. Call a community of scientists that satisfies Longino's social requirements a diverse and critical community. Diverse and critical communities expose the biased assumptions and values of individual scientists by subjecting their work to public scrutiny. That process does not eliminate all values from the scientific community, but it renders them visible and open to question rather than tacit and unobserved

(Longino 1990, 73-80; 2002a, 107). Our own biases are often invisible to us, but the social level property of diversity in value commitments facilitates the public exposure of individuals' idiosyncratic perspectives, eliminating such biases when necessary. Somewhat counter- intuitively, the social function of value diversity is to enable the elimination of undesirable value

39 biases. “If the social relations of inquirers are well arranged, then each person's biases can check and correct the others'” (Anderson 1995, 53).

Diversity of perspectives promotes objectivity by eliminating the values that are considered grossly biased by the scientific community. Thus tempered equality, treating scientists with conflicting value commitments as authoritative equals, promotes the objective justification of scientific theories by removing idiosyncratic value biases from the scientific community's judgments. The moral, political, and practical values of individuals promote objectivity by lending themselves to a diverse and critical community that scrutinizes the theoretical and evaluative claims of others. Since values are ineliminable from individual judgment, they should be purged at the social level through critical dialogue.

Longino's social epistemological standards are meant to promote diversity on the one hand, but they should also restrict the diversity of perspectives on the other. Diverse and critical communities must 1) have public avenues of criticism, 2) address and respond to the criticisms offered, 3) share epistemic standards so that disputes may be resolved, and 4) both promote and restrict the diversity of evaluative and theoretical beliefs in the community by granting scientists tempered equality of intellectual authority. The influence of radical ideologies is restrained by shared community standards, including not only empirical standards but social values as well, so that only the values adopted by a suitably diverse and critical community are allowed to influence scientific judgments (Longino 1990, 77). Tempered equality, and the requirement of shared standards, prevents scientists from adopting absolutely any perspective.

40 1.2.3 From Subjective to Social Relativism: Equal Legitimacy Revisited

Exactly which values ought to be eliminated from science and which can serve as shared standards is not clear on Longino's account because diversity of values in the community is itself epistemically virtuous. There is a tension between advocating the elimination of value biases through social processes while at the same time recommending diversity of perspectives within the community. Temperance and equality, the two elements of Longino's fourth social requirement, pull in opposite directions. One requires accommodating many perspectives while the other rules out some perspectives. The requirement of shared standards is likewise at tension with the promotion of diversity (Douglas 2004, 464). Diversity is about disagreement, whereas shared standards require agreement. On the one hand Longino needs disputes to be resolvable, but on the other hand the disputes themselves are epistemically advantageous because they expose biases. There is an internal tension between incorporating and eliminating values, promoting and restricting diversity.6

The source of that tension lies in Longino's exposition of two different roles for values in scientific practice. Values act as both direct criteria for individual scientists' theory choices as well as social factors that facilitate critical interaction between scientists. In their direct role, values are ineliminable biases that cause beliefs. The point of underdetermination arguments is to establish the ineliminability of individuals' values and their negative epistemic effects. Indirectly, the diversity of value commitments is instrumental in eliminating at least some of those biases.

6 Longino is not the first to wrestle with this issue. Kuhn (1977) refers to the conflict between agreement and disagreement, which he takes as fundamental to his philosophy, as “the essential tension.” Laudan (1984) and Solomon (2001) similarly begin their discussions of values in science with an examination of the tension between consensus and dissent.

41 The critical scientific process aims to eliminate individuals' value biases just because they are often illegitimate reasons for belief, and without the assumption that values are illegitimate biases there is no motivation to eliminate values through social interaction. If values were genuinely epistemic reasons for belief at the individual level, why should they be eliminated at the social level? The tension between incorporating and eliminating values reflects the general tension between construing values as both illegitimate causes of belief for individuals, yet instrumentally valuable for promoting objectivity at the social level (Solomon 2001, 145; Wylie and Nelson 2007, 77).

Longino's archeological example of underdetermination is instructive. Neither the theory that men originally developed tools nor the feminist alternative is justified by the masculine or feminine values scientists adopt. Scientists choose the masculine or feminine theory based on their values, but these theories are more or less justified depending on their ability to withstand public scrutiny from a diverse and critical scientific community, not their conformity with the values and goals of particular individuals. In contexts of underdetermination, values do not directly justify theory choices, they merely cause them. Thus values, in their direct role of influencing theory choice, are arbitrary subjective preferences. While scientists' values illegitimately causes them to accept theories, having a community of diverse value perspectives can mitigate these negative effects (Intemann 2008, 1069). Values only have a legitimate epistemic role at the social level because of the illegitimate role they play for individuals. On

Longino's view, values play a legitimate indirect social role in the epistemic methodology of science but they also illegitimately influence scientists' beliefs directly, and the former is justified

42 in light of the latter. The theory is a kind of rough compromise with the ineliminability of values.

Since we cannot purge values from scientific methodology, they must be leveraged to indirectly minimize their direct psychological influence.

Some holists have resisted Longino's social epistemology because it depicts values as mere causes of belief rather than genuine reasons for belief, taking issue with her underdetermination argument precisely because it treats values as biasing influences (Anderson

2004; Intemann 2008). Interestingly, traditionalists worry that epistemic holism implies the equal legitimacy of all values in scientific reasoning, whereas Longino's holist critics are concerned with the equal illegitimacy of values in directly justifying scientific theories7. In either case, the problems they raise are still ones of epistemic equality: all values are either equally epistemic or equally spurious. As direct reasons for belief, all values are equally illegitimate and in need of removal, but as promoters of disagreement and critical interaction, all values are equally legitimate because all values contribute to diversity.

The equal legitimacy problem points out that irresolvable conflicts between different perspectives are problematic for science. In recognition of that problem, Longino requires shared standards and tempered equality of epistemic authority. Some values will be tolerated by the scientific community only to be eliminated through the process of critical interaction. Others will not be tolerated in the first place either because they do not live up to the shared standards of the community or because they violate the requirement of tempered equality. The pressing question

7 There is, after all, something deeply conflicted about arguing that values are epistemic influences when their only epistemic function is to eliminate the very biases they cause in the first place. A stronger version of holism, which I develop in subsequent chapters, would deny the goal of eliminating values, even at the social level, and resist conceding that values can only bias individuals' theory choices.

43 for Longino is which values should be excluded from the scientific community in the first place, rather than weeded out through the social process of critical interaction. She points out that which perspectives count as epistemically warranted is a central problem for philosophy of science as she conceives it, but does not say whose values are illegitimate and whose are epistemically valuable in contributing to diversity. She merely contends that a diverse and critical community will not tolerate all value perspectives.

Longino gives good reason to believe that the influence of individuals' values can be constrained by the broader scientific community, but why think that the community itself will not adopt a profoundly biased perspective? The problem of equal legitimacy was introduced as a concern about individuals' values: if all values are equally legitimate, which theories individuals adopt will be arbitrary because the values they accept are arbitrary. Social epistemology averts subjective relativism by eliminating the value biases of individuals so that scientific justification is relative to the scientific community's shared values. The equal legitimacy argument can be restated as a problem for societies' values, however, because nothing about Longino's social epistemology guarantees which values will be tolerated by a diverse and critical community. A diverse and critical community might come to accept of Nazi or creationist values, for instance.

How can we be certain that a diverse and critical community will always tolerate legitimate values and reject illegitimate values? The concern is that Longino has avoided subjective individualistic relativism, where justification is relative to a person's perspective, only to adopt a kind of cultural or social relativism where justification is relative to a community's perspective.

For Longino, value claims must stand up to the same process of public scrutiny and

44 revision that theoretical claims are subject to, which moderates the diversity of legitimate values in science (Longino 2002a, 134; 1996, 74).8 The epistemic import of values, however, rests on the theory that diversity of value judgments in the community increases scientific objectivity.

Diversity and moderation are ideals that pull in different directions and it is hard to see exactly how diverse or moderate an ideal scientific community should be. Kristen Intemann, for instance, believes Longino's theory has “the counter-intuitive consequence that we should actively encourage the participation of Nazis or members of the Flat Earth Society” (Intemann

2008, 1071). Such a community would, after all, be more diverse. Because values must be accepted by a diverse and critical community, objections like these only have force if Nazi values are not rejected during the critical process. Longino can offer no guarantee that diverse and critical communities will not tolerate Nazi values, however. Her epistemology requires certain organizational features of scientific communities and ensures the primacy of empirical evidence, but we can only hope that a diverse and critical community that does not ignore empirical evidence reaches the right conclusions about moral, political, and practical goals.

1.3 Conclusion

Two of the three traditional problems outlined at the beginning of this chapter still loom large for epistemic holism. Contemporary holists are emphatic about respecting the epistemic role of evidence in science, they are wary of the problem of evidential ignorance, but the motivational problem and concerns about equal legitimacy are more thoroughly entrenched.

Underdetermination arguments show that the traditional picture of scientific justification is

8 The exact mechanism of moderation in Longino's social epistemology is the subject of Section 2.2.3.

45 unable to account for all of the actual reasons scientists adopt the theories they do, but those arguments only establish that values do in fact affect scientists' beliefs, not that they should.

Causes of belief are not reasons for belief; values may bias scientists without providing justification. The equal legitimacy problem points out that even if holism can be motivated, theoretical justification seems to be relativized to individual scientists' values so that a scientific theory might be justified for one scientist but not another. Scientific disputes about the justification of theories become mere differences in subjective preference if all values are equally legitimate.

Social epistemology is one popular way of dealing with these concerns. Social holists argue that having a diversity of value perspectives in the scientific community facilitates objective science by exposing the biased presuppositions of scientists. Diverse communities are more likely to produce objective science than homogenous social groups because the theories and values of individual scientists are exposed to more critical scrutiny. The social utility of diversity, however, lends epistemic credibility to all values. If diversity alone were the aim, all values would be equally welcome to the scientific community. Thus social epistemologists' answer to the motivational problem leads directly to the equal legitimacy problem.

There is a tension between incorporating values in order to promote diversity, on the one hand, and eliminating values in order to remove bias on the other. The more motivation Longino provides for incorporating a diversity of values, the more reasons philosophers have to be concerned about equal legitimacy. The more she works to deem values like sexism, racism, and religious dogmatism illegitimate biases, the more she undermines her motivation to incorporate a

46 diversity of values into the scientific community. The source of this tension lies in social epistemologists' contention that values have epistemic utility despite their concession that values act primarily as biases for individual scientists. Social epistemologists undermine the epistemic credibility of values by accommodating value biases at the individual level only insofar as they can be used to eliminate their own influence at the social level. Although values are portrayed as epistemically useful, for individual scientists they are nothing more than biases. The ultimate goal of these views is to cleanse science of as many value influences as possible.

Chapter 2 advocates a more radical departure from traditional epistemology and abandons the goal of eliminating the influence of values in science. The view presented is largely informed by the work of Philip Kitcher (2001; 2011a). Interestingly, Kitcher (1993) was once a proponent of the traditional value-free view and a fierce opponent of Longino's social epistemology. In recent years, however, Kitcher has advocated an epistemic role for values in science while retaining his opposition to underdetermination arguments and diversity as motivations to holism.

After summarizing the historical development of Kitcher's holism, I argue that it can, with slight modification, avoid the problems of motivation and equal legitimacy that informed this chapter's arguments. Underdetermination arguments do not establish an epistemic role for values in science. Social epistemologists' argument from the epistemic utility of diversity, often deployed in conjunction with underdetermination, motivates holism only at the expense of equal legitimacy. Kitcher's approach, which I call 'goal-oriented epistemology', does not depend on either underdetermination or the benefits of diversity.

47 Chapter 2: Introducing Goal-Oriented Epistemology

Nobody is interested in the minutiae of the shapes and colors of the

objects in your vicinity, the temperature fluctuations in your

microenvironment, the infinite number of disjunctions you can generate

with your favorite true statement as one disjunct, or the probabilities of

the events in the many chance setups you can contrive with objects in

your vicinity. (Kitcher 1993, 94)

The two kinds of success science achieves, success in gaining theoretical knowledge and the successful application of those theories to practical problems, are both essential qualities of good science. Science seeks not just truth, but significant truth. It has the dual aims of understanding the world around us and using that understanding to achieve moral, social, and practical goals. There are many facts that simply do not interest scientists because there is no known use they might be put to. The quote from Kitcher above demonstrates the inanity of some insignificant empirical truths.

The value of scientific research is not always apparent. What did society gain, for instance, when scientists successfully cloned Dolly the sheep? In cloning sheep, scientists learned a great deal about controlling an organism’s development (Kitcher 2001, 78-80). The project helped overcome technical problems like how to transfer genetic material between embryos and how to sustain the life of a genetically engineered embryo through fetal stages.

48 Some scientific goals are to resolve technical problems such as these. In the long run, however, information gained from cloning experiments may aid in producing other forms of life for food or medicine, to improve quality of life or solve problems of world hunger. The significance of cloning research is ultimately both moral and practical.

One way to preserve the traditional view of science as free of moral, practical, and political entanglements would be to develop an account of significance – the applicability of theories – that appeals only to cognitive values like simplicity, precision, and breadth of explanatory scope. A purely cognitive account of scientific significance would attempt to explain the moral and practical value of science as a byproduct the simplicity, precision, and breadth of theories produced by inquiry free of the influences moral and practical values (Goldman 1999;

Kitcher 1993). Though theories with high cognitive value are desirable, nothing about the cognitive values can ensure the practical value of science or explain the social and practical value that science offers. They are not the kind of values we have in mind when we say that only interesting, useful, or significant truths should concern science. Some broad factual generalizations are nonetheless mundane, just as there are precise facts that are of no practical value.

Precision is valuable at times, merely tedious when taken too far. There are more and less precise approximations of the distances between objects in the solar system, distances can be measured in millimeters or kilometers, but precise measurements to the millimeter of the distance between planets are not necessarily more useful. Scientific knowledge needs to be precise enough for whatever purposes we put that knowledge to, but we can always, in principle,

49 demand more precision because measurements can be taken in infinitely smaller increments

(Anderson 1995, 53). A cognitive notion of significance does not tell us which facts should be ignored and which are worthy of scientific attention (Anderson 1995, 39-40). If science considered only cognitive values important, scientific texts might be filled with lists of precise measurements; scientists could spend their whole lives measuring the distances between different objects at different times.

There are also insignificant general facts. It is true that the distance between any two objects on earth does not exceed 80,000 kilometers and an infinite number of insignificant truths are explained by the proximity of earth-bound objects: Why is distance between any two objects in my office less than one light-year? Because the distance between any two objects on earth does not exceed 80,000 kilometers! We do not value a general theory for the sake of generality.

The best theories explain many useful facts, facts that can be used to achieve practical goals. The precision, generality, or simplicity of medical and anthropological sciences does not explain their practicality. The human sciences are useful because of their specificity to our species. They are more focused and narrow subjects than organic biology, but the breadth of general biology is also useful in some contexts. Depending on our practical goals, we have to make compromises between values like precision and generality because the cognitive values do not themselves ensure the utility of knowledge (Kitcher 2001, 80). Cognitive values do not answer the question

“what would be so valuable in gaining that?” (ibid., 66).

Some philosophers have pointed to scientific significance as motivating a form of epistemic holism that avoids the problems associated with underdetermination and social

50 epistemology discussed in the previous chapter (Anderson 1995, Intemann 2008; Kitcher 2001;

2011a). Section 2.1 introduces Kitcher's epistemic role for significance, beginning with his observation that significance is a necessary condition for scientific knowledge; uninteresting facts are ignored by the scientific community. He argues that because values influence decisions about what to research, they directly affect scientific knowledge by determining which truths we come to know. For Kitcher, there are too many facts for science to provide a complete account of the natural world, scientific knowledge must always be shaped by the goals and values of the community that does the investigating (Kitcher 2001, 60). Values also influence scientists’ theory choices when there are multiple true theories of the same phenomena. Because there are a great number of facts about any one phenomena, many different theories of the same phenomena may be true. Kitcher observes that scientists in different research programs adopt different theories of the same entities and argues that because cases of theoretical pluralism are widespread, theory choices are inevitably guided by the goals of research. Not only is significance a necessary condition for knowledge, which theories are significant depends on the particular subject and goals of research (Kitcher 2001, chapters 4 and 5).

One question that arises throughout this discussion is whether Kitcher has identified genuinely epistemic, rather than merely practical, value influences. Scientists may make research decisions about what to study or which theories to employ for practical reasons rather than epistemic reasons. In part because he recognizes that these decisions may be explained practically rather than epistemically, Kitcher offers a third role for values in science: Judgments about the value of knowledge affect epistemic standards because scientists cannot judge the

51 adequacy of evidence “without thinking about the ways in which acceptance or rejection of the hypothesis under scrutiny would affect the advance of science or the lives of people” (Kitcher

2011a, 32). One example of comes from sciences where peoples' health depends on the reliability of scientific knowledge (Douglas 2000; Rudner 1953). In medical contexts we demand high levels of evidential justification in order to prevent undue harm because faulty reasoning can result in serious consequences for patients' lives; risky knowledge claims like these are held to high epistemic standards because the goal of preventing harm requires epistemic caution. I call this kind of epistemic holism: goal-oriented epistemology.

Section 2.1 concludes by arguing that although Kitcher's initial arguments are insufficient to motivate an epistemic role for values in science, at least some of his early examples can be explained in light of his later account of goal-oriented epistemology. Instead of focusing on the plurality of theories scientists adopt, I focus on the plurality of epistemic standards in play in different scientific contexts. The goal of this chapter is to give a general overview of goal- oriented epistemology as an account of values in science. Looming large behind much of the discussion is a traditional distinction between practical standards for when to apply a hypothesis and epistemic standards of sufficient justification. Goal-oriented epistemology, the traditionalist worries, mistakes scientists' acceptance of practical standards in order to accomplish research goals for purely epistemic standards (Haack 1998; Jeffrey 1956; Koertge 2000; Lacey 2005a;

Levi 1960). Values may play a role in scientific practice without having genuinely epistemic influence. Although this chapter briefly discusses some of those concerns, which I have called motivational problems, a comprehensive response is not developed until Chapter 3. This chapter

52 merely aims to describe the view and defend it from some preliminary concerns.

Section 2.2 deals with two objections to epistemic holism introduced in chapter one: problems about ignoring evidence and the equal legitimacy of values. Susan Haack (1998) worries that holism allows scientists to believe whatever they wish was the case, either because they can ignore evidence that counts against their favored theory or because the desirability of the theory itself justifies the claim when no confirming evidence is available. The concern is that significance will displace evidence as the primary source of epistemic justification. Though

Haack’s objection is relevant to some varieties of epistemic holism, particularly those motivated by underdetermination arguments, I argue that goal-oriented epistemology does not allow evidential ignorance. Significance alone never sufficiently justifies a claim without evidential support, both value and evidence are necessary for scientific knowledge.

One of the primary challenges for holism is to avoid “anything goes” relativism, where any scientist can justifiably adopt any belief he or she wants. One aspect of the problem involves portraying values as sufficient, on their own, for knowledge without the corroboration of evidence. Another aspect is the validity of value claims themselves. If all values are equally justified, different values will lead to different standards, relativising scientific justification to whichever values a scientist happens to adopt. In order to avoid epistemic relativism, holists must avoid portraying values as mere subjective desires or cultural preferences. Some values must be more legitimate than others. Equal legitimacy problems are not unique to value-laden epistemologies, however. Equal legitimacy is problematic for traditionalists as well as epistemic holists. On the traditional view, moral and practical values are important for the practice of

53 science in deciding what to research, which research methodologies are morally permissible, and when scientists are sufficiently justified in accepting a theory for practical purposes. Acceptance of moral and practical constraints on science, whether epistemic or merely practical, requires the belief that some actions are morally superior to others, that some facts are genuinely more useful than others. No adequate view of science can accept the equal legitimacy of all values and nothing about goal-oriented epistemology precludes holists from accepting some values as more justified than others.

The chapter concludes by showing that while some social epistemologists (Solomon

2001; Longino 2002a) have exacerbated equal legitimacy problems by appealing to the epistemic advantages of diversity, there is no reason to believe goal-oriented epistemology is similarly troubled. Section 2.2.3 takes up Longino's defence against relativism. She argues that attention to evidence can moderate the diversity of legitimate values. I argue that this aspect of Longino's view conflicts with several other components of her theory, however. First, Longino claims that any body of evidence can be interpreted in radically different ways. Second, Longino has opposed Kitcher's suggestion that evidence can tells us which values are objectively right and wrong. Finally, I argue that Longino's attempt to avoid equal legitimacy is at odds her argrument for values in science, which appeals to the benefits of diversity.

2.1 Kitcher's Epistemic Holism

2.1.1 Scientific Significance in Science, Truth, and Democracy

Kitcher's (2001) Science, Truth, and Democracy emphasizes the way judgments about the

54 moral, practical, and political significance of scientific knowledge influence which facts we come to know about the world. Considerations of significance determine which phenomena are worth investigating and which evidence is worth paying attention to (Kitcher 2001, Chapter 6).

Second, Kitcher argues that because there can be many true theoretical descriptions of the same phenomena, significance influences which descriptions or facts about a particular phenomena are worth recognizing as salient to particular scientific goals (ibid., Chapters 4 and 5). Not only do values determine which facts are worth knowing in a general sense, in particular scientific applications different factual claims about the same phenomena can be significant.

Significance is measured by the practical applicability or instrumental success of scientific theories in solving problems and realizing goals (Kitcher 2001, chapter 6). A significant theory is one that can be utilized to promote some goal or value in action. There must be some possible benefit in gaining knowledge for it to be regarded as significant to the scientific community. Some philosophers (Goldman 1995, 180; Haack 1998) contrast significant knowledge with boring, trivial, or uninteresting facts, but some areas of scientific research are downright dangerous or harmful, not just trivial.

The Human Genome Project has been controversial, for instance, not just because the benefits of genomic research may be extremely limited, there are also many potentially harmful applications (Kitcher 2001, 4-6). Genomic research may someday lead to beneficial medical applications like cures and vaccinations, but they have been slow to develop. Genetic indicators and causes of disease have been identified, however, and Kitcher worries people might be genetically discriminated against for conditions that can be diagnosed even though they cannot

55 be cured. Employers might not hire those with undesirable traits, health insurance companies may refuse to cover those disposed to certain illnesses. Genetics may become one more way to discriminate unfairly.

Another worry is the possibility of “designer babies” that are genetically engineered to have the most desirable traits. Genetically enhanced people will have a distinct advantage over those without such enhancements, but only those who can afford the medical procedures will enjoy the fruits of genetic engineering. The concern is that economic inequality will breed biological inequality, allowing the wealthy to unfairly live longer and have more fulfilling lives.

Genomic research may be applied in ways that unfairly benefits the wealthy and harms the poor.

While some possible applications of genomic research are promising, others are cause for concern. Scientific knowledge usually offers potential harms as well as benefits– Einstein's physics promised nuclear technology that could both revolutionize the energy industry and cause catastrophic damage. Genomic research offers medical innovations as well as social hazards.

Significance involves consideration of potential harms as well as benefits, and there are difficult complications in weighing potential benefits against potential harms. How useful must genomic research be, for instance, in order to make up for its many harmful applications? Does the destructive capability of Einstein's discoveries outweigh the beneficial practical uses they have been put to? How can we know all the repercussions of applying theories in advance of their application?

These are questions the scientific community must face regardless of epistemic theory.

Nothing about holism exacerbates them. On Kitcher's view, insignificant and obviously harmful

56 propositions are not even possible candidates for scientific knowledge. He suggests research into racial, gender, and class divisions, for instance, are morally suspect and therefore incapable of living up to the epistemic standards of science (2001, 6-7). For traditionalists, the harms and benefits of research are merely practical concerns about how we should act, not epistemic reasons for or against belief (Haack 1998, 105; Jeffrey 1956; Lacey 2005a; Simon 2006).

Practical reason and epistemic reason are two separate kinds of reason that should, on their view, be kept distinct. The epistemic aim of truth and the practical goal of significance in science are independent concerns, each with their own set of normative implications. A value-free view of scientific justification does not require a value-free view of scientific practice. For traditionalists, boring, trivial, and harmful knowledge is undesirable and impractical, but still capable of epistemic justification. Even traditionalists must admit that judgments of significance are important for scientific practice. “[M]orality is pervasive, applying to every act we do and decision we make, including the choice of which scientifically significant projects to pursue. A scientist must therefore be guided by morality when planning scientific actions” (Simon 2006,

210). Traditionalists distinguish between moral and practical reasoning about significance, on the one hand, and epistemic reasoning about the justification of theories on the other.

Chapter three deals explicitly with the traditional view, which isolates moral and practical judgments of significance from epistemic judgments. It represents a primary challenge to any view of epistemology that ties epistemic justification to the moral and practical value of knowledge. For now, however, it is important to note that even if the value of scientific knowledge is a purely practical concern, difficult questions about determining the value of

57 knowledge in advance are no less problematic for the traditional view. Any account of practical reasoning in science must confront problems about how to assess the likely significance of some area of research, how to decide when potential rewards of research outweigh possible risks, what phenomena are in need of further investigation, and when potential risks prevent further investigation.

Another role Kitcher assigns to values in scientific reasoning involves choices between multiple true theories. In cases of theoretical pluralism, where different theories of the same phenomena are available, scientists accept the theory that is most significant for the problem at hand (2001, Chapters 4 and 5). Given two highly justified theories, scientists are more justified in accepting the theory that is more valuable or rewarding for their particular application. Kitcher considers the biological concept of Species, which has proven very difficult for philosophers or scientists to define precisely. Some scientists identify species using genetic criteria which take time and resources to assess but provide stable classifications (Stackerbandt et al. 2002;

Ereshefsky 2010, 556-557). Some use gross physical characteristics to quickly and easily identify an organism while others insist reproductive isolation is definitive (Kitcher 2001, 48-

49).

The idea that species are reproductively isolated populations is a species theory that accords well with evolutionary theory. It is significant in theoretical contexts but it does not provide a convenient way of identifying species membership. Scientists cannot readily check a population of organisms to see which reproduce with each other. A paleontologist investigating extinct species, for example, cannot ascertain which reproductive community a fossilized

58 dinosaur belonged to. Paleontologists rarely have access to genetic material, either. They rely on observable physical traits preserved in fossils. Biologists call the observable appearances of an organism, like size, shape, and coloration, its morphology. The observable physical traits of microbes will not help the microbiologist to identify species taxa, however. They prefer genetic criteria. Genetic species theories are not significant for paleontologists in their normal practical contexts. They are for microbiologists. Kitcher’s account of significance is context-sensitive because not all knowledge is useful for any and all purposes. Which theory is deemed significant depends on the goals and context of the inquirer.

For the botanist and paleontologist, recognizing the physical features of an organism, its morphology, is good enough for classification. There are facts about what particular species look like and these facts sufficiently ground some classificatory practices. For those concerned with studying malaria transmission, however, the kinds of mosquitoes that carry the disease are not distinguished by physical appearances. Central to the identification of malaria-hosting mosquitoes is the fact that only certain interbreeding populations of mosquitoes carry malaria

(Kitcher 2001, 49). Thus a taxonomic theory of mosquitoes aimed at preventing malaria transmission must recognize reproductive facts as salient for classification, not because mosquitoes don't have common physical features, ecological niches, and genetics (they do), but because our interest in preventing malaria makes reproductive isolation salient.

On Kitcher's view, which species theory scientists are justified in accepting depends on what kind of application the theory is employed in. Significance is not a static relation between facts and values. It varies depending on which goals and values are at issue in particular

59 scientific contexts. It is not practical for paleontologists to adopt reproductive species criteria even if such criteria are more theoretically justified than the theories they do adopt. The difficulty for a value-free epistemology is to explain how a paleontologist could claim that physical appearances should be used to identify species taxa. If evidential justification is the only justification science is concerned with, the species theory paleontologists employ is not optimal– few regard physical appearances as definitive of species. Because paleontologists' classificatory practices rely on morphological species theories, their classificatory practices appear to rely on a dubious assumption. If epistemic justification involves goals and values, however, scientists acceptance of convenient theories can be explained epistemically: The significance of reproductive, genetic, and morphological facts for justifying species theories varies depending on the goals and values those theories are called on to serve.

Reproductive and genetic theories are insignificant for paleontology because they threaten a fundamental goal of that science, to identify ancient biological taxa. Nobody is going to identify extinct species by fossilized remains using genetic or reproductive species theories, so genetic and reproductive facts are not salient in paleontological contexts. Identifying species with physical appearances is a valuable theory because it identifies species membership accurately enough to facilitate the epistemic goal of paleontological classification in light of very little surviving evidence. The justification of a theory depends on the goals it helps us achieve in application. Because different scientists are concerned with achieving different goals, significance varies from context to context so that theories significant in one application may not be significant for all applications.

60 Kitcher's theoretical pluralism differs from underdetermination arguments in at least one important respect: Whereas underdetermination cases demonstrate values' role in deciding between competing and incompatible theoretical descriptions of the same phenomena, theoretical pluralism allows that multiple theories of the same phenomena may be consistent and true at the same time (Kitcher 2001, 48-45). Different theories need not be competing interpretations of the same facts. They may be complimentary descriptions. Kitcher's argument from theoretical pluralism does suffer from a similar problem of motivation, however. Underdetermination arguments fail to demonstrate why values should be seen as epistemic influences in the context of justification rather than causal influences in the context of discovery. Nobody doubts that values influence scientists' theory choices. They doubt whether values are genuinely epistemic influences. Similarly, one might contend that scientists' choices between multiple true theories of the same phenomena are merely practical, not epistemic decisions.

Helen Longino worries, for instance, that Kitcher's argument confuses the quest for significance with the goal of epistemic justification or truth: “once we've decided what we want to know (significant truth), there is still a question whether our investigations have resulted in knowledge (significant truths or conformation)" (2002c, 576). Kitcher's argument only shows that scientists choose theories based on practical goals, not that a practical theory is any more justified than an impractical theory. Values may influence scientists' decisions as a matter of practical necessity rather than epistemic principle. While Kitcher's arguments in Science, Truth, and Democracy reveal ways in which values are essential for science, they fail to motivate an epistemic role for values.

61 2.1.2 Kitcher's Goal-Oriented Epistemology

Kitcher later (2011a) realizes the mistake. After Science, Truth, and Democracy's emphasis on the way value judgments inform decisions about which phenomena to investigate and which facts about those phenomena are significant for particular scientific goals, Kitcher now recognizes that “Friends of the value-free ideal will surely greet these points with a yawn.

Nobody ever thought, they will declare, that values could be expunged from all contexts of scientific decision making” (2011a, 32). Values might alter scientists' decisions about which facts to investigate and which theories to employ without altering their epistemic standards. Kitcher then offers a new motivation for values in science, denying that scientists could “make up their minds about the adequacy of the evidence without thinking about the ways in which acceptance or rejection of the hypothesis under scrutiny would affect the advance of science or the lives of people” (ibid., 32).

Appealing to an argument advanced by Richard Rudner (1953), Kitcher claims that “[i]f wrongly accepting a hypothesis would lead to outcomes judged to be disastrous, the standards for acceptance rightly go up. Conversely, if there are valuable results to be achieved if the hypothesis is correct, cautious insistence on 'further evidence' can seem callous” (ibid., 32-33).

Kitcher's new brand of epistemic holism stresses the interdependence of practical decision making and the stringency of epistemic standards. He suggests that a claim is sufficiently justified epistemically when it is supported enough to accomplish the moral, social, and practical goals that make the claim significant (Kitcher 2011a 105; 2011b, 523). The epistemic evaluation of scientific theories turns not just on the evidence for and against a proposition, but the possible

62 consequences of action based on that claim as well. Scientists are sufficiently justified in accepting a theory when they are sufficiently justified in employing it for practical purposes.

This goal-oriented epistemology makes standards of sufficient evidence sensitive to the potential harms and benefits of accepting a particular scientific claim.

Significance influences scientific knowledge claims by mitigating risks associated with uncertainty. Philosophers have long recognized that the logic of scientific discovery ensures likelihood at best, not certainty (Popper 1959). No matter how much evidential support has been collected it is always possible that scientists have not observed all the relevant data, have interpreted the evidence incorrectly, set up a faulty experiment, or made some simple mistake of miscalculation. Rudner's (1953) argument points out that uncertainty inevitably leads to risks in the acceptance of scientific claims. The first time scientists set off a nuclear reaction they must have known, despite the concern of skeptics, that the explosion would not set off a massively destructive chain reaction. Given that certainty is never attainable, Rudner wonders how probable an uncontrollably explosive reaction was (Rudner 1953, 2-3). It may have been likely that no such disaster would occur, but how likely was likely enough to justify the risk? For practical purposes, high risks demand high levels of epistemic justification. Risky claims demand more evidential support than their benign counterparts and the level of evidential support demanded depends on which errors, and how much likelihood of error, one is willing to tolerate.

When error presents substantial risks we are cautious, demanding high levels of empirical justification. Less risky knowledge claims, those that will not lead to particularly harmful consequences when mistaken, do not demand the same epistemic precautions because there is

63 little harm in simply being wrong.

Heather Douglas (2000) calls these kinds of concerns inductive risks. She points out that low epistemic standards increase the likelihood of false positives, cases where scientists take some claim to be true though it is in fact false. High evidential standards increase the likelihood of false negatives because true knowledge claims are more likely to be rejected as false (ibid.,

567). Suppose we want to know if some chemical is harmful to humans or other animals:

Requiring low evidential support for the claim that a chemical is safe for human consumption presents a risk of false positives. We might take the chemical to be safe when it is in fact toxic.

Raising the evidential standards makes false negatives more likely; scientists might take the chemical to be harmful when it is not. Given a choice between erring on the side of false positives or false negatives with regard to human safety, we are better off playing it safe. If there are serious risks of poisoning people by mistakenly concluding that this chemical is harmless but no serious problems in mistakenly labeling a harmless chemical poisonous, it is practical to keep epistemic standards high in order to compensate for the risks to human health. For Rudner,

Douglas, and Kitcher, epistemic standards vary according to the potential risks and rewards of accepting or rejecting the claim in question. Scientific hypotheses are sufficiently justified by the evidence when justified enough to employ for practical purposes, for the accomplishment of desirable outcomes and avoidance of undesirable consequences.

Kitcher's goal-oriented epistemology also sheds light on some of the influence he ascribes to significance in Science, Truth, and Democracy. First Kitcher claimed that moral or practical value is necessary for scientific knowledge, although his epistemic motivations were

64 unclear. Why not believe science's interest in valuable knowledge is purely practical rather than epistemic? If epistemic standards can only be determined in light of the potential harms and benefits of theory acceptance, it would be impossible to decide how much justification is sufficient for knowledge without practical implications to consider. Because certainty is never attainable, determining how much justification is sufficient requires value judgments about the risks and rewards of belief. Significance is necessary for science because insignificant facts are not even objects of possible knowledge; there are no appropriate epistemic standards by which to judge them. Decisions about which phenomena to research and which to ignore may be purely practical. According to goal-oriented epistemology, however, insignificant facts are not only unworthy of scientific attention, they are in principle incapable of adequate epistemic justification1. Significance is not only practically necessary for research decisions, it is epistemically necessary for determining standards of sufficient evidential support.

Kitcher also claims that because there are many true theories of any phenomena, different theories of the same phenomena are relevant for different scientific purposes. Kitcher's later shift in focus from different theories to different epistemic standards suggests that the relevant difference between paleontologists, who identify species with morphology, and microbiologists, who use genetics, is not a difference in theoretical commitments, but epistemic standards.

Paleontologists and microbiologists need not adopt different theoretical accounts of species.

They may merely adopt different epistemic standards in light of different practical goals.

Morphological standards are valuable for paleontology because very little evidence has survived,

1 Chapters three and four will suggest that decisions about what to research and what to ignore have epistemic consequences, even if those decisions are not epistemically motivated.

65 not because paleontologists believe species are fundamentally morphological. Paleontologists and microbiologists can employ different epistemic standards for species identification without commitment to different theoretical accounts of species. The plurality of methods for identifying species indicates a plurality of epistemic standards, not theories.

All biological species have morphological, genetic, and reproductive features and one species theory might account for all three. It is possible, for example, that species are essentially reproductively isolated populations but that morphology and genes reliably track reproductive communities. Because evidence about reproductive relations is hard to obtain, genetics and morphology often stand in as weaker evidence for membership in a reproductively defined species. Different kinds of evidence are used to justify species classifications, not different theories. There are facts about the reproductive relations species display, facts about the genetic make-up of species, and facts about what species look like, but which facts are epistemically salient depends on the goals of research.

Paleontologists use morphological evidence because it is practical for their purposes despite being a weak indicator of species membership. Microbiologists are held to higher standards. One reason microbiologists use genetic evidence is its reliability. Paleontologists do not face acute risks of error; no lives will be harmed by the misidentification of long extinct species. Various species of microbes, on the other hand, are essential for understanding and controlling food safety, agricultural practices, mineralogy and mining, disease, environmental conservation, and bio-terrorism (Lawrence and Retchless 2010, 570). Microbial species are responsible for maintenance of the atmosphere, mineral formation, digestion, causing illness,

66 resistance to illness, and the increasing anti-biotic resistance of some pathogens (Andam et al.

2010, 591; O'Malley and Dupré 2007, 157). Due to the widespread application of microbial species categories, misidentifying microbes may result in flawed medical diagnoses, misunderstandings of geological processes, or misidentification of biological weaponry. Thus microbiological contexts call for higher epistemic standards than paleontological contexts because the risks associated with error are significantly higher. Because some kinds of evidence are stronger than others, different kinds of evidence may count as sufficient in different contexts depending on the risks. Morphological evidence, though weak, is sufficient for paleontological classification but insufficient for microbiology.

Different kinds of evidence not only provide stronger or weaker justification, they also facilitate or prevent different risks. Attention to morphological evidence prevents lumping together physically different organisms, but the organisms of some species display very different morphologies. Males and females of the same species sometimes have very different appearances, as do caterpillars and butterflies, despite belonging to the same species. As a result, reliance on morphological evidence alone risks wrongly splitting up members of the same species on the basis of appearances. Genetic criteria of species membership, on the other hand, risks misidentifying genetically divergent species. All species are composed of organisms with different genes, so determining the level of genetic similarity required for species membership is difficult (Okasha 2002, 196-197). Too much similarity risks mistakenly ruling out members of the species that happen to have unique genes, too little similarity risks lumping together organisms from different species.

67 Morphological evidence risks misidentifying species with physiologically diverse members as well as physically similar organisms from different species. Genetic evidence risks misidentifying genetically dissimilar members of the same species or distinct species that share many genes. When one set of risks is potentially more harmful than another, one kind of evidence will be preferable to the other. Using different kinds of evidence propagates different risks and some risks may be more disastrous than others. Which evidence counts as sufficient depends on which risks scientists are willing to accept, genetic error or morphological misidentifications. To the extent that different kinds of evidence supply weaker or stronger evidence and propagate different risks, goal-oriented epistemology requires attention to different kinds of evidence in different contexts as well different amounts of evidential support. What is interesting about examples of pluralism is scientists' use of different bodies of evidence to justify similar claims, not their acceptance of different theories. Adopting different criteria of sufficient evidence does not necessitate adopting different theories; paleontologists and microbiologists may both accept reproductive species theories, for example, while employing different epistemic standards for identifying species.

Significance is a necessary condition for scientific knowledge for both practical and epistemic reasons. Because we have a limited supply of time and money, science cannot offer a complete understanding of every empirical fact. Science is subject to moral and practical norms simply because all human actions are so constrained; the scientific quest for truth is not exempt from prohibitions on harming innocents or wasting resources. The necessity of scientific significance is not only a practical requirement, however. It is a necessary condition for

68 knowledge because, according to goal-oriented epistemology, epistemic standards can only be determined in light of the moral and practical implications of that knowledge. When there are risks associated with the possibility that some theory is false despite our best efforts to confirm it, what Douglas calls inductive risks, epistemic standards must be raised in order to mitigate those risks. If acting on a false theory would threaten our goals and values, more evidence is required of that theory in order to avoid the costly consequences. A theory is justifiably believed when the evidence supports it sufficiently for application. Determining how much and what kinds of evidence will suffice depends on the potential benefits of being right and the risks of being wrong. As examples of pluralism show, in different scientific contexts similar claims can be adequately supported by different bodies of evidence. The goals of particular scientific research programs often require different epistemic standards.

2.2 Goal-Oriented Epistemology and Relativism

2.2.1 Significance and Evidence

Susan Haack rejects any epistemic role for values in science, arguing that values undermine scientific objectivity by subjecting scientific justification to the whims of mere desire and opinion. On her portrayal of holism, goal-oriented research abandons genuine inquiry and leads scientists to accept the theory that appeals to their personal desires or the values of their community, regardless of the evidence. “What is most troubling is... the idea that inquiry should be politicized” (Haack 1998, 131). Politicized inquiry attempts to justify scientific claims by taking their value or desirability as evidence for their truth. It puts “scientists under pressure to

69 find evidence favoring a politically desired conclusion instead of honestly investigating what hypothesis is best warranted” (ibid., 109). Rather than rely on evidence and sound reasoning,

Haack sees scientists influenced by moral, political, or practical values as dishonest inquirers that ignore evidence opposed to the conclusion they prefer.

According to Haack, epistemologists that advocate an epistemic role for values take values to be a kind of evidence, supposing “propositions about what states of affairs are desirable or deplorable could be evidence that things are, or are not, so” (ibid., 129). Values are seen as determiners of belief when evidence for a desired proposition is lacking. Values might cause scientists to believe a proposition, but that mistakes significance for evidence, allowing valuable or desirable claims to pass for justified knowledge despite a lack of evidence (ibid., 93). The increasing popularity of epistemic holism in philosophy of science, on her view, marks a major shift from traditionalism,

…which took science to deserve a kind of epistemic authority in virtue of

its particularly rational and objective method of inquiry, to the New

Cynicism, which sees science as a value-permeated social institution,

stresses the importance of politics, prejudice, and propaganda, rather than

the weight of the evidence, in determining what theories are accepted.

(Haack 1998, 127-8)

If holists had their way, the traditional lament goes, science would be an anything goes

70 affair where evidence no longer has an epistemically privileged position in justifying scientific claims. If values can replace evidence, any theory can be accepted on the basis of its desirability.

Haack's primary challenge to holism is her concern that evidence and values provide opposing methods of settling scientific questions. Elizabeth Anderson points out that Haack's pessimism about values rests on the questionable assumption that attention to evidence is incompatible with an epistemic role for values:

Either theory choice is guided by the facts, by observation and evidence,

or it is guided by moral values and social influences, construed as wishes,

desires, or social-political demands. To the extent that moral values and

social influences shape theory choice, they displace attention to evidence

and valid reasoning and hence interfere with the discovery of truth.

(Anderson 1995, 33)

Epistemic significance, however, is meant to supplement evidence rather than displace it.

Significance alone cannot establish the truth of a theory the way evidence can. Kitcher promotes the search for significant truths, claims that are both supported by evidence as well as valuable in application. Though values alone should not cause the scientific community to adopt false or unsupported hypotheses, that does not preclude "...the legitimacy of social values playing a role in determining which things we learn about the world” (Roush 2007, 166). Significance distinguishes practical truths from impractical truths and determines which facts are worthy of

71 acceptance given certain goals and values. Significance does not determine which claims are true or false. For Kitcher, significance is a necessary condition for scientific knowledge but it is not sufficient. Both evidential support and instrumental value are necessary for scientific knowledge.

Nothing about his epistemic holism endorses ignoring evidence or replacing it with ideology and prejudice. When Haack says that holists treat values as a kind of evidence, or causes of belief that replace evidence, she envisions an epistemology that enshrines values as sufficient for knowledge without the support of evidence, but that is not the role goal-oriented epistemology ascribes to values.

In mitigating risks associated with uncertainty, values influence how much evidence is demanded of a theoretical claim. Haack acknowledges that even the most rigorous attention to evidence rarely, if ever, ensures certainty (Haack 1998, 95). Nothing about this epistemic role for values allows them to replace evidence or gives scientists license to ignore evidence. To the contrary, successfully mitigating inductive risks requires the ability to accurately assess the evidential support a theory has in order to diagnose the likelihood of error. The more likely a theory’s falsehood, the more risky it is to employ in practical action. Deciding how risky a theory is in application depends on how likely that theory is to turn out wrong and only evidence can provide information about the likely truth or falsity of a theory. Accepting theories with little or no evidential support only increases the likelihood of failure in application. Goal-oriented epistemology is motivated by the potentially harmful consequences of being wrong as well as the potential benefits of knowledge. Ignoring evidence or taking desirability as a kind of evidence raises the chances of failure in application because it raises the probability of accepting false

72 hypotheses. Thus the negative epistemic role Haack ascribes to values is antithetical to the role

Kitcher promotes in mitigating the risks associated with uncertainty. Goal-oriented epistemology is concerned with avoiding errors and avoiding error demands rigorous attention to evidence.

Why, then, should Haack's arguments against holism be taken seriously? Has she simply interpreted her holist adversaries uncharitably, arguing with positions that no serious philosopher has endorsed? Haack's claim that holism replaces evidence with desires or allows investigators to ignore evidence in order to accommodate what they want to be true is better understood as a critique of underdetermination arguments, a major target of her work (1998, 91-93, 110-111,

128-129).

The underdetermination thesis claims that evidence alone does not determine which theory is most justified. “Data alone are consistent with different and conflicting hypotheses”

(Longino 2002a, 126). Depending on the background assumptions one adopts, different hypotheses will be consistent with the empirical data. On some versions of the underdetermination thesis, any body of evidence can be radically reinterpreted to accommodate any hypothesis (Quine 1951, 43). Consider religious creationists, some of whom believe that

God created all species at once and that the theory of evolution is both false and heretical.

Creationism has the goal of salvation and creationists believe that their faith in divine creation will enable that goal because God will reward faithful adherence to religious doctrine with salvation. Given the assumption that religious faith in divine creation ought to go unquestioned, creationists might radically reinterpret the biological evidence in order to accommodate their dogma. Fossils, the dogmatic creationist might argue, are merely an attempt at deception

73 concocted by Satan to turn our hearts from God and test our faith. Or perhaps God himself put fossils in the ground to weed out the faithful from the heretics. Any evidence against creationism might, with the right background assumptions about the desirability of salvation and what salvation requires, be radically reinterpreted to accommodate creationism.

Underdetermination cases like these, where values produce a radical reinterpretation of evidence, are similar to cases of evidential ignorance. It seems reasonable to say that the creationists in this example have ignored biological evidence and replaced it with mere dogma, looking for evidence that supports their predetermined conclusion without carrying out an honest inquiry. On the assumption that faith in divine creation will be rewarded with salvation, these creationists have taken the desirability of salvation as evidence for creationism. What justifies their beliefs about fossils, the origins of species, and biological theory is the claim that continued faith in divine creation is desirable no matter what the evidence indicates. To the extent that they acknowledge biological evidence at all, they explain it away as mere deception, using underdetermination to disregard the import of any evidence that conflicts with what they want to believe. Haack's arguments are applicable to a certain variety of holism, one that sees values as background assumptions that influence evidential interpretation in light of underdetermination.

Holists that appeal to the underdetermination thesis must moderate their account in order to avoid cases of radical reinterpretation of evidence because immoderate underdetermination allows inquirers to ignore evidence, or at least explain it away, in order to believe whatever they want (Gillies 1993; Laudan 1990). Moderation requires restricting which background assumptions are legitimately adopted. Haack's criticism of underdetermination would be

74 toothless if not for recent feminist and social epistemological arguments. Recall from Chapter 1

(Seciton 1.1) that underdetermination arguments alone do not motivate an epistemic role for values; values might cause beliefs in the context of discovery with justifying those beliefs. Social epistemologists like Longino (1990) and Solomon (2001) argue that scientific communities with a diversity of value commitments are epistemically superior to those that suppress the influence of values. Chapter 1 (Section 1.2) argued that Longino's social epistemology is unable to rule out some values as illegitimate background assumptions; appealing to the epistemic utility of diversity means granting scientific legitimacy to any value commitment that contributes to diversity of perspectives. A scientific community with creationists is more diverse than one without. Underdetermination cannot be moderated when coupled with an appeal to diversity.

Judgments of scientific significance do not alter the interpretation of evidence.

Significance measures the potential practical, moral, and social value of applying knowledge that the evidence supports. Disagreements about the significance of knowledge do not produce equally legitimate interpretations of evidence; they are disputes about which facts are useful to know about. One reason epistemic holism ought to be motivated by considerations of significance rather than underdetermination arguments is the possibility of radical reinterpretations of empirical data. Radical reinterpretation bears a resemblance to simply ignoring evidence and replacing it with values. If any hypothesis is consistent with any set of data, as Quine argued, underdetermination legitimates belief in any hypothesis at all. As a result, once values are permitted to influence theoretical decisions, it becomes possible to believe whatever one desires.

75 2.2.2 Relativism and Equal Legitimacy

Another aspect of Haack's criticism is her characterization of values as desires, interests, biases, and prejudices (1998, 91, 117-118, 127-132). Her language implies that values are nothing more than personal or social preferences, which accords well with her claim that values can only hinder or bias honest inquiry, but it is not obvious or even commonly accepted.

Traditionalists worry that if values are allowed to justify scientific hypotheses, science will have to tolerate all values including those of Nazis, sexists, and creationists (Clough and Loges 2008;

Goldman 2002; Haack 1998, 118; Intemann 2008). Taken together, the problems of evidential ignorance and equal legitimacy imply anything goes relativism. If evidence can be ignored and any value can justify belief, scientists will be epistemically justified in believing whatever they want. Even if epistemic holism allowed scientists to ignore evidence, however, the beliefs of creationists, Nazis, and sexists should be rejected because they are wrong. “[Haack's] assumption that value-laden inquiry leads to dogmatism makes sense only if value judgments are essentially matters of blind, overbearing assertion, not subject to critical scrutiny or revision in light of arguments and evidence” (Anderson 1995, 35). An anything goes view of scientific justification, one in which scientists may adopt any theory they like, requires an anything goes view of value commitment, a view on which all values are equally legitimate reasons for accepting a proposition. On Haack's criticism of holism, all values are equally bad reasons for adopting a scientific theory in part because values are merely personal desires or social preferences. “At bottom, the concern is that value-judgments are subject to no standards at all, that valuing is a matter of taste” (Kitcher 2011a, 40).

76 If all values were equally justified or mere preferences, it would present a serious problem for goal-oriented epistemology. Commitment to opposing values would produce widespread and irresolvable disagreement about which facts are significant, which goals ought to be pursued, and which risks ought to be avoided. Recognizing the problem, Kitcher simply denies that any value judgment is as defensible as any other (2011a, chapter 2). Philosophers and laymen alike generally believe that some value judgments are wrong-headed and others virtuous, yet philosophers of science have often assumed that values are nothing more that arbitrary preferences or unjustified biases (Putnam 1990, 144-47). In Haack's work the assumption is made clear by the terms she chooses as synonymous for value– words like prejudice, bias, propaganda, and desire. But desires can be either justified or unjustified and individual desires alone need not determine the significance of factual claims. Epistemic holism should avoid any view that sees all values as equally legitimate because it dooms science to irresolvable disagreement. If values are legitimate epistemic influences, they cannot all be legitimate epistemic influences.

The controversial nature of moral and political values also represents a problem for the traditional view. If all values were subject to widespread disagreement, any attempt to specify the proper aims of science would be contentious, but the scientific community does adopt and enforce some agreed upon moral and practical rules. Scientists shun the killing or torturing of human research subjects, for instance. Racist values are another likely candidate for prohibition.

Respect for intellectual property is a value that is rightfully imposed on scientific communities because the intellectual achievements of science are the product of particular scientists’ hard

77 work and insight. They deserve the rights of ownership to the fruits of their labors. Not all values are as controversial as the polarizing political and moral values that attract popular attention.

Some values are relatively uncontroversial. Traditionalists often ignore cases of agreement on values, preferring instead to focus on the controversial nature of moral and political beliefs.

The traditional view of scientific justification distinguishes between practical reasoning for action and epistemic reasoning about which theories to accept as true. On that view, beneficial knowledge is more desirable than useless or harmful knowledge because science, like any other human activity, should promote human flourishing and prevent human suffering, but the epistemic justification of scientific knowledge is logically independent of its value (Haack

1998, 94, 111; Koertge 2000; Lacey 2005a; 2005b). Moral and practical values might influence decisions about how to act – what phenomena to study, the application of scientific knowledge, and which research methods are morally permissible – but on the traditional view decisions about how to act must be kept distinct form decisions about what to believe (Jeffrey 1956; Levi

1960).

Nevertheless, traditionalists like Haack acknowledge that questions about how to apply scientific knowledge, what questions are worthy of scientific research, and the ethical treatment of test subjects are important for science (1998, 116). In application “when we are obliged to act, and decide to proceed as if such-and-such were true although we can't be sure it is, it is wise to take whatever precautions are feasible against its turning out to be false after all” (ibid., 111).

That is one role Kitcher attributes to values. Another is in deciding which questions are worth pursuing, and again Haack agrees that “not only what scientific questions are tackled, but also

78 what solutions are envisaged, is constrained by social values” (ibid., 111). She mentions, with some frequency, that science is not interested in boring, trivial, or unimportant truths, but significant truth because “not every truth is worth knowing” (ibid., 17; also: 13, 94, 105). Those concerns, Haack argues, are not epistemic issues but questions about the conduct of good inquiry.

Good inquiry searches for significant truths, but all truths may be epistemically justified. Haack claims that “Standards of better and worse evidence and standards of better- and worse- conducted inquiry are often confused” (ibid., 105). The distinction between standards of good inquiry and standards of epistemic or evidential support reflects a general strategy among traditionalists to isolate the practical or moral dimensions of action, in this case the actions of inquiring scientists, from the evidential justification of theories.

There can be no objective way of identifying significant truths if there is no way to distinguish between right and wrong values. Treating values as mere prejudice and bias renders practical decisions about how to act and which research to conduct intractable. If all value commitments are arbitrary or equally legitimate, scientists might conduct any experiment they deem morally permissible without responsibility to any higher standard. Taking all values as equally legitimate while at the same time acknowledging the necessity of moral and practical judgments in standards of scientific inquiry and application is self-undermining. If scientists must decide which facts are significant but all judgments of significance are equally legitimate, scientists will be allowed to ignore facts they find inconvenient (Anderson 1995, 37-39). Both holists and traditionalists must grapple with questions about which moral and practical values are appropriate for science because moral and practical reasoning is important for science even if

79 unrelated to epistemic justification. The traditional view of scientific justification does not alleviate the moral and practical responsibilities of scientific communities. It merely relegates such decisions to the practical sphere of reasoning about proper inquiry and application. Even if practical and moral values are not epistemic influences, decisions must still be made about which research methods are morally permissible, what issues are worthy of scientific attention, and the benefits or hazards of applying scientific theories.

Noretta Koertge’s take on values in science is similarly conflicted on this front. On the one hand, she believes scientists have a moral responsibility to promote human welfare, refrain from immoral experimentation, and demand more evidence for risky claims (Koertge 2000, S

47-S49, S51-S52). On the other hand, she doubts our ability to arrive at moral consensus and sees holism as an excuse to illegitimately impose politically progressive values on the scientific community (ibid., S52-S54). Of course, if society enforces any moral constraints on science, declares certain hypotheses risky, or promotes a specific ideal of human welfare, somebody’s values must be imposed on the community. There is a tension between arguing that values should not influence scientific reasoning because they are subjective, controversial, or prejudicial while at the same time acknowledging that they are essential for scientific inquiry and application of scientific theories. On questions of moral experimentation, for example, Koertge says “it is imperative that experimental subjects be treated humanely, although there is no consensus about exactly what that entails” (ibid., S52). Later, regarding the legitimacy of values in theoretical reasoning, she argues that:

80 Since it is generally more difficult to resolve disputes about matters of

politics and religion than it is to sort out even the most complex

scientific issues, to make scientific investigations subject to the

formation of political consensus would put very serious limitations on

the scope of scientific inquiry. (Koertge 2000, S54)

If waiting on political consensus about values is inappropriate and no consensus is likely, then how should scientists respect the imperative to treat experimental subjects humanely? Either value disputes are resolvable for issues of experimentation as well as the justification of theories, or they are irresolvable on both counts. Value judgments cannot be too controversial for deciding epistemic standards yet benign for questions about best practices. If the controversial nature of moral values is problematic for their influence in contexts of theoretical justification, they are equally problematic in contexts of application and inquiry.

Any view of science that acknowledges the importance of moral and practical constraints on scientific inquiry must reject the equal legitimacy of values. Some contentious value claims will likely result in scientific disagreement, and while that is problematic, philosophers of science should not be burdened with the task of deciding exactly which values are appropriate to science just to defend their epistemic theory. Even if values are sometimes controversial, epistemologists are concerned with how values affect the justification of scientific claims, whereas deciding which values are correct is the task of moral philosophy (Goldman 1995, 172).

Though disagreements about values are frequent, it does not follow that they are all equally

81 legitimate and it is no mark against holism that some questions about morality, social policy, and practicality are difficult to resolve.

Kitcher provides a two-sided view of significance as both value in application and subjective interest. He keeps open the possibility that some scientific research is valuable in itself because it satisfies a natural human curiosity and, as a result, contends that knowledge claims are significant if they promote human values or if they appeal to scientists’ natural curiosities

(Kitcher 2011a, 109). The problem with letting subjective curiosity determine the significance of an issue is that significance becomes relative to mere subjective interest if one person’s curiosity is enough to establish the value of knowledge (Brown 2010). Curiosity or interest alone does not indicate genuine significance.

The importance of Kitcher's subjective aspect of significance can be minimized, or perhaps removed, by recognizing that subjective interests track genuine value. “We do count some of our fellows as pathological, either because they obsess about trifles or because they are completely dull… I am drawing on this practice of limited tolerance, on our conception of

‘healthy curiosity’” (Kitcher 2001, 89). That renders the issue of curiosity and subjective interest moot. If a healthy curiosity only concerns genuinely significant questions, then curiosity is only an indication of significance; only genuinely significance questions will arouse subjective interest. There is no obvious reason Kitcher needs to appeal to the curiosity of individuals at all and his account of significance would be better off without the complication. People express a healthy interest in particular questions because the answers might prove to be useful, so the potential value of science is the ultimate source of both scientific significance and subjective

82 curiosity. No claim is significant just because someone has expressed a subjective interest in it.

2.2.3 Social Epistemology, Equal Legitimacy, and Evidence

Chapter one argued that social epistemologists who promote the epistemic value of accommodating a diversity of values in scientific communities invite equal legitimacy problems

(Haraway 1988; Longino 1990; 2002a; Solomon 2001; Wylie 2003;). Values are important for social epistemology because diversity of values in the community ensures that some biases are eliminated through the critical interaction of different perspectives (Longino 2002a, 80; Solomon

2001, 145-149). But if diversity grounds the epistemic virtue of values in science, inane, abhorrent, and destructive values become desirable in the scientific community simply because they contribute to diversity (Intemann 2008, 1071). All values contribute to diversity, so all values are equally legitimate socio-epistemic influences. “Not only must potentially dissenting voices not be discounted; they must be cultivated” (Longino 2002a, 132).

While Miriam Solomon explicitly endorses the idea that all values consistent with the available evidence are equally legitimate epistemic influences because they all increase diversity,

Helen Longino's social epistemology is more nuanced. Solomon notes this difference, pointing out that her own theory “is interested in all sources of partiality, not only those emphasized by feminist philosophers of science who focus on the partiality arising from oppressive political structures and ideological frameworks” (Solomon 2001, 147). She criticizes Longino's

“expectation that 'individual biases' can be, and should be, eliminated,” arguing that “Longino does not justify her distinction between ideological factors (which she glorifies as 'values') and

83 individual factors (which she regards, with more traditional epistemologists, as 'biases' to be eliminated)” (ibid., 145).

Longino requires that all values be subjected to critical scrutiny in the scientific community so that “theories and hypotheses accepted in the community will not incorporate the idiosyncratic biases (heuristic or social) of an individual or subgroup” (2002a, 134). Which values count as legitimate for science “is not a function of the whim of individuals but rather of public standards or criteria” (ibid.,130). Longino does not portray each person's values as equally legitimate, they can be rejected by the community, but any value that the community tolerates is a legitimate value for science. There are no standards for determining which values are legitimate beyond the standards adopted by an appropriately diverse and critical scientific community

(ibid., 105, 138).

Longino does recognize that appealing to the epistemic virtue of diversity might legitimate any perspective. In response, she offers arguments against “wrongheaded” approaches to science like creationism (Longino 2002a, 156-162). Creationism has the goal of salvation and creationists believe that their belief in divine creation will enable that goal. God is supposed to reward belief in divine creation with salvation, so the values of creationists justify their theory of biological origins (ibid., 157-158). In order to keep creationist theories out of the body of acceptable science, Longino needs a way of judging creationist values illegitimate for science.

First Longino claims that the critical interactions of a diverse scientific community are likely to eliminate creationist perspectives because they “would be in conflict with other goals of an inquiring community, and could be shown to be in such conflict if the community were indeed

84 open. ...And that is all that needs to be shown” (ibid., 159). But mere conflict in goals is not enough to eliminate the creationist perspective from the scientific community because diversity in goals is epistemically valuable. Longino's social holism turns on the epistemic benefits of having conflicting values in the scientific community, so disagreement is not only insufficient to disqualify creationism, disagreement about values is fundamental to her theory. Creationist values should necessarily conflict with the shared standards and values of a diverse and critical community, not merely conflict with some dissenting individuals in that community. So long as creationists are willing to subject their values to public scrutiny, nothing about Longino's social epistemology guarantees that every diverse and critical scientific community will reject the creationists' goal of religious salvation.

Longino rightfully worries that “wrongheaded standards will be permitted by treating the community as determinative of standards” (ibid., 159-160). Creationism is just one example of a community adopting wrong-headed epistemic standards like believing theories that promote religious salvation. The example Longino turns to in order to address the problem is a community that relies on the prophecies of tea leaf readers. Imagine a community that adopts the epistemic standard “believe what the tea leaves say,” where some member of the community is appointed as the authority on deciphering tea leaf prophecies.9 Longino argues that wrongheaded standards like these will not enable the realization of practical goals, but of course

9 Why Longino abandons the example of creationist perspectives in favor of tea leaf readers is unclear. She points out that wrongheaded values will lead to wrongheaded epistemic standards, but just when she is about to explain why some value-laden epistemic standards of evidential interpretation are unscientific, she changes the example from creationist perspectives to tea leaf readers (2002a, 158-159). Presumably, “believe what the Bible says” would have provided an equally absurd epistemic standard to criticize, and one that follows from the creationists' goal of salvation.

85 different communities and individuals have different goals. If the community adopts the goal of religious salvation and following the tea leaves is thought to enable that goal, then wrong-headed standards can only be rejected if it can be shown that the goals they promote are themselves wrong-headed. Rejecting social relativism about epistemic standards thus requires rejecting the equal legitimacy of all goals and values. For that reason, Longino argues that some goals are more justified than the goals of creationists and tea leaf believers.

What restricts people from adopting wrong-headed goals and standards is their inability to serve goals that no reasonable community can reject, like eating and survival:

One can imagine consulting tea leaves through an infinite regress of justification

when belief does not matter to survival... Hunger pains are not banished on the

say-so of tea leaves or comparable prognostications. A community that endorsed

the rule – believe the tea leaves – would... find itself frustrated in the attempt to

realize its goals. (Ibid., 160)

Thus Longino avoids epistemic relativism, where epistemic standards are set by mere agreement in the community, by claiming that some goals are universally legitimate, and not simply agreed upon by the scientific community. The tea leaf believers, on her argument, are only forced to reject their religious values because they will inevitably conflict with the goal of feeding the community, a goal she assumes even the tea leaf believers must adopt.

Survival is not a universal goal in the sense that no community could ever possibly reject

86 it, however. Although rare, there are instances of entire communities giving up on the goal of survival and committing mass suicide. Despite Longino's claim that all values must be subordinate to the goal of survival, some communities believe that there are more important values; many feel that some causes are worth dying for. Nations sometimes start wars on the assumption that survival is not the most important concern. In fact, some of the deadliest wars are waged because of religious convictions. Contra Longino, some choose martyrdom in war just because the communities they belong to judge religious salvation more important than survival.

Survival is not a universal goal; many communities have abandoned that goal at one time or another. What Longino needs is an argument to establish that survival ought to be an overriding goal – that it should be universally adopted even if it is not.

If Longino could show that survival is a goal every community should accept, it would go a long way toward ruling out those value commitments she considers wrongheaded, like religious salvation. In order to make such an argument, however, Longino would need some standard for deciding which value, survival or salvation, is more important. She might argue, for instance, that some values are objectively right while others are objectively wrong. Evidence might be brought to bear on evaluative questions so that some values can be shown to be objectively superior to others. By subjecting values to the same public scrutiny as scientific theories, Longino allows empirical evidence to play a role in eliminating wrongheaded values from the scientific community. Attention to evidence and critical interaction in public forums will narrow the range of acceptable value commitments, not merely through consensus building, but because some values are simply inconsistent with a rational interpretation of the evidence.

87 That strategy is at tension with several other elements of her view, however.

One concern is Longino's commitment to the plasticity of evidential interpretation.

According to the underdetermination thesis, which is crucial to her argument for values in science, evidence can be interpreted many different ways. As a result, for any fact that might render creationism untenable, creationists may provide an alternative interpretation of that fact.

When scientists point to the fossilized evidence against creationism, for example, creationists offer their own interpretation of fossils. Similarly, when choosing between the goals of survival and salvation, Longino must show that the evidence unambiguously supports one over the other.

If evidence is supposed to decide between competing values like, the evidence cannot underdetermine that choice.

More importantly, Longino is cautious about presuming to know which values are correct. While Kitcher argues that some values are objectively better than others, for example,

Longino explicitly denies this possibility. In her view, Kitcher “presumes we know what those values are. Unfortunately, an objectivism about values... is not tenable” (Longino 2002b, 565). It would be difficult, therefore, for Longino to claim that the goal of survival is objectively superior to the goal of salvation. Although Longino clearly believes no community could rationally promote the value of salvation to the point of endangering their own survival, it is unclear what that judgment is based on. Longino needs some way of deciding between rival goals in order to avoid equal legitimacy problems. Given Longino's skepticism about the objectivity of values, her commitment to underdetermination, and her appeal to diversity, it is hard to see how she can privilege the goal of survival over the values of religious zealots. A community that incorporates

88 religious goals will, after all, contain a greater diversity of perspectives than a community that bans religious perspectives.

To review, Longino believes wrong-headed goals like religious salvation will lead to wrong-headed epistemic standards like “believe what the tea-leaves say” or, more appropriately for the religious example, “believe what the religious texts say.” Wrong-headed standards will in turn lead to inaccurate beliefs, and when our theoretical understanding of the natural world becomes hopelessly inaccurate, goals like survival will no longer be achievable. Longino attempts to eliminate religious values from science by arguing that they would lead to the acceptance of theories that would undermine the goal of survival, but nothing about Longino's social epistemic standards ensures that a community will favor survival over the goal of religious salvation. Longino's social epistemology cannot guarantee that any value, no matter how wrongheaded, will not be tolerated by a diverse and critical community. By appealing to the epistemic virtue of diversity in value perspectives, Longino invites concerns about equal legitimacy and the social relativity of value-laden epistemic standards.

The concern, for my purposes, is not that Longino's social epistemology slips into an anything-goes relativism about epistemic standards, or even that she does not specify how exactly to determine which values are legitimate scientific influences. Those concerns are mitigated, and diversity restricted, by recognizing that values must answer to evidence. Some values are provably wrongheaded, others supported by the evidence. My worry is that Longino avoids equal legitimacy and relativism only by moderating the aspect of her view which is supposed to motivate an epistemic role for values. If evidence undermines commitment to some

89 values, enough inquiry might lead us to accept one set of values as uniquely supported by the evidence, undermining diversity entirely. Although Longino is surely right in assuming that a plurality of values are supported by the evidence, the conflict between pluralism and moderation remains. Because the motivation of diversity leads directly to the equal legitimacy problem, there will always be a tension between Longino's argument for value-laden science and her defense against relativism.

Finally, granting Longino the assumption that survival really is more important than religious salvation, she argues that scientific communities should adopt theories and standards that enable survival and reject theories and standards that undermine survival. Implicitly,

Longino has argued that values like survival not only contribute to a diverse and critical community, they provide reasons for belief. But if values like survival provide justifying reasons for believing some theories, then social theorists are faced with the original problem of motivation: Why assume values like survival are reasons for belief rather than merely biasing causes of belief? Why assume that values like survival are reasons for belief whereas values like religious salvation are merely biases? If beliefs that promote survival are more justified than beliefs that do not, the value of survival is a source of justification, not simply instrumental in removing bias. Longino's epistemology would then require an argument to show that values can justify theories, not simply eliminate biases by contributing to the diversity and critical discourse of scientific communities. The more social epistemologists try to limit which values count as epistemically beneficial, the more they undermine the epistemic motivation for value-laden science that diversity is supposed to provide.

90 Kitcher calls a view like Longino's “vulgar democracy” because he believes it grants every perspective equal legitimacy the way democracy gives every citizen an equal vote (Kitcher

2011a, 113). Any view that sees all values as equally justified, or equally unjustified, exacerbates equal legitimacy problems by putting all values on equal footing. While Kitcher thinks some values are objectively better than others, Longino resists that tack for understandable reasons.

Recall Noretta Koertge's suspicion that holists like Longino really want a scientific community more in line with their own politically progressive ideals (S53-S55). One virtue of Longino's social epistemology is that it need not force one set of values on the entire community, despite

Koertge's concerns, because diversity of perspectives is intrinsically valuable. The counter- intuitive result is that Longino, an avowed feminist, does not claim that feminist values are objectively superior to sexist values. Feminist perspectives are particularly important because they are underrepresented in the scientific community, not because they are objectively superior

(Longino 1990, 111).

One goal of Kitcher's social epistemology is to establish social forums for resolving moral and practical disputes within the scientific community (Kitcher 2001, chapter 10).

Although there is widespread disagreement about moral values, Kitcher believes a well- organized scientific community can arbitrate such disputes. Longino also argues that critical discourse can resolve moral disagreements, but the difference between Kitcher and Longino's faith in a critical community to come to some consensus on which values are appropriate for science is this: according to Kitcher there are moral and practical truths to arrive at (Kitcher

2011a chapter 2; 2001 chapter 8). Longino specifically rejects this feature of Kitcher's view

91 because it “presumes we know what those values are” (Longino 2002b, 565).

Goal-oriented epistemology avoids exacerbating equal legitimacy problems by not assuming that values are arbitrary, relative, equally legitimate, or preferably eliminated from scientific reasoning. Philosophers and laymen alike generally believe that some value judgments are wrongheaded and others virtuous. Both traditional and holist philosophers of science, on the other hand, have viewed values as nothing but biases for so long that intelligent thinkers have often assumed, tacitly or explicitly, that all values are equally legitimate or illegitimate biases in scientific reasoning (Kitcher 2011a, 40-41). Any role for values in science, whether practical or epistemic, must assume that some values are objectively better than others. No adequate account of science can accept all research methodologies as equally moral or all truths as equally significant. If there are objective standards for better and worse inquiry, as Haack claims, there must be objective standards for better and worse values.

2.3 Conclusion

The scientific role Kitcher assigns to significance ties epistemic justification to practical justification (2011a, 32; 2001, 200). A scientific claim is sufficiently justified for belief when it is sufficiently justified for practical application.

Theoretical justification, on this view, proceeds on two tracks: normative and

evidential. Contextual values determine what phenomena are so significant that a

theory ought to represent them when they exist. Evidence indicates when those

92 phenomena are instantiated. (Anderson 1995, 51)

Significance also helps determine what standards of evidence are applicable to a claim. One consideration is the goals some piece of information may help us achieve if true, another is the repercussions of accepting a proposition that is untrue. When there are substantial risks of error and potential harms associated with acting on that error, scientific claims must be held to high epistemic standards in order to avoid those potential harms. Raising epistemic standards helps avoid taking unnecessary inductive risks. Because different research projects have different moral and practical implications, they require different epistemic standards. While Kitcher introduces examples of theoretical pluralism in order to motivate his epistemic holism, they are better understood as examples of epistemic pluralism, where different bodies of evidence count as sufficient for the same kind of scientific claims. Microbiological classification requires strong evidence because uncertainty in microbiology presents greater risks of harm than other fields of biological taxonomy. Because paleontological classification, unlike microbiology, has little bearing on health and welfare, relaxing epistemic standards is unlikely to result in moral or practical harm. As a result, paleontologists can rely on weaker kinds of evidence like physical appearances to justify their species classifications.

None of Kitcher's arguments about the epistemic import of significance implies an anything goes view of scientific justification. Value in application is a necessary condition for scientific knowledge, not a sufficient condition. Scientists are not justified in accepting a theory simply because it is valuable. Deciding how much and what kinds of evidence are appropriate for

93 scientific justification is not the same as deciding that evidence is not appropriate at all. On this conception of epistemic holism, significance supplements evidential support without replacing or discounting the importance of evidence. Goal-oriented epistemology aims at scientific knowledge that will benefit society and avoid the harmful consequences of error. Both require rigorous attention to evidence.

Although goal-oriented epistemology is not subject to the problems of evidential ignorance and the equal legitimacy of values, motivational questions still remain. Traditionalists worry that goal-oriented epistemology confuses practical reasoning about how to act with epistemic reasons for belief. Scientists may demand more evidence for practical purposes, but standards for how to act in practice may be independent of standards for what to believe. The scientific practice of adopting context-specific standards does not necessitate an epistemic influence for values in science; paleontologists and microbiologists might adopt different standards for practical application while adhering to the same epistemic standards. Scientists might accept some claims for practical purposes without making epistemic judgments about whether or not they ought to be believed. On the traditional view, practical reasoning is value- laden while epistemic reasoning is value-free. Why think the values that inform scientific practice are epistemically significant? Chapter 3 takes up these concerns and provides a motivating argument for goal-oriented epistemology.

94 Chapter 3: Motivating Goal-Oriented Epistemology

Kitcher's epistemic holism stresses the interdependence of practical decision making and the justification of scientific theories. On his view, which I have called goal-oriented epistemology, scientists cannot judge the adequacy of evidence “without thinking about the ways in which acceptance or rejection of the hypothesis under scrutiny would affect the advance of science or the lives of people” (Kitcher 2011a, 32). The evidence for any hypothesis is sufficient for belief when the hypothesis is justified sufficiently for use in helping to resolve the moral and practical problems that make it interesting or significant (Kitcher 2011a, 105). In one example,

Kitcher points to the different standards of evidential sufficiency employed in scientific fields with different goals. What is justified for paleontologists is not necessarily justified for epidemiologists because their standards for what counts as sufficient justification are different

(Kitcher 2001, 48-49). Traditionalists distinguish between practical and epistemic reasoning and relegate scientists' judgments about moral and practical consequences of their actions to the practical sphere of reasoning (Haack 1998, 94, 111; Koertge 2000; Lacey 2005a; 2005b). On the traditional view, values may influence scientists' decisions about how to act, not what to believe; practical standards for action may be contextual and value-laden but epistemic standards of justification are not. Because some science is intended to be applied in action, even traditionalists may concede that some scientific methodologies will be influenced by moral and practical values. Scientific research programs adopt both practical and epistemic goals. Epidemiology has the goal of not just understanding diseases but curing and preventing them as well.

Kitcher's epidemiological example comes from applied science rather than pure research

95 and applied science might be subject to moral and practical goals while pure science considers only epistemic reasoning. The aim of much of Kitcher's recent work (2001; 2011a) is to undermine the traditional distinction between pure science and pure epistemic reasoning, on the one hand, and applied science and practical reasoning on the other. Kitcher believes traditionalists are misguided in their assumption that any scientific standards could be value free, arguing that pure science is a myth (Kitcher 2001, chapter 7). First Kitcher points out that all scientific research pursues not just true beliefs but significant truths. All science is guided by practical reasoning in choosing which facts to investigate. Secondly, individual scientists are motivated by the rewards scientific institutions offer in the form of prestige, research funding, and monetary compensation. The potential for fame and fortune provide practical incentives for scientists to make ground breaking discoveries even in pure research contexts (ibid., 87).

Scientists are never purely epistemic agents; all science proceeds with moral and practical goals in mind.

Finally, the goals scientists adopt are sensitive to evidence:

[T]he entire course of the research is typically not foreseen in advance. Your

goals adjust and evolve as you encounter unanticipated difficulties. New

questions arise as worthy of investigation. Value-judgments are constantly

made, and the investigation cannot be reduced to some neat division of contexts

that allows values to be factored out at the end. (Kitcher 2011a, 35)

96 As new facts are discovered, some goals are frustrated and new goals come to light. After a little research, scientists sometimes discover that their original goals are misplaced or practically unobtainable, but new possible applications of the research may also come to light. Not only do standards of sufficient evidence depend on goals, the goals of science are in part dictated by the evidence. For Kitcher, epistemic and practical reasoning are intertwined in a way that precludes segregating value judgments and epistemic justification.

Kitcher's motivating argument for his goal-oriented epistemology stresses the interaction of epistemic and practical reasoning in all scientific research (2011a, chapter 7). The practical nature of scientific reasoning, even in supposedly pure research contexts, does not motivate an epistemic role for values, however. One way of defending the value-free view is to concede that, in practice, scientific standards are influenced by ethical and practical values. Even if practical and epistemic reasoning interact in practice, they might be distinguished in principle. Scientists may accept hypotheses for their own scientific purposes, using practical acceptance criteria developed specifically for one specific research context, while philosophers are concerned with purely epistemic judgments about which hypotheses are justifiably believed. Hugh Lacey

(2005a; 2005b) argues that the methodologies scientists adopt in practice are contextual and value-laden but not strictly speaking epistemic. On his view, it is important to distinguish between the value-free epistemic support of a theory, its theoretical acceptability, and the reasons scientists come to accept theories in practice. “The acceptability of [a theory] is not a matter for social explanation only its actual acceptance is” (Lacey2005b, 978). Motivating goal-oriented epistemology requires more than merely demonstrating scientists' value-laden reasoning in

97 practice. Epistemic reasoning may be value-free even if scientific practice is not. The traditional distinction between practical and epistemic standards made by Lacey and others must be addressed in order to motivate an epistemic role for values in science. The aim of this chapter is to provide an argument for goal-oriented epistemology that undermines the practical/epistemic dichotomy.1

Like Kitcher, Richard Rudner (1953) has argued that scientists must make value judgments in order to determine when the available evidence sufficiently justifies belief. Because scientific theories are always uncertain, there is always some risk of error. How much uncertainty scientists accept, Rudner observes, varies across different areas of scientific practice; what counts as sufficient justification in one scientific context can be insufficient in another. The best explanation for this variation, Rudner claims, is the different moral and practical goals adopted in those contexts. His argument suggests that a scientific claim is deemed sufficiently justified when the risks of error are low enough for application; a theory is sufficiently justified in the epistemic sense when it is sufficiently justified for practical purposes.

Rudner's view has seen a recent resurgence in popularity in philosophy of science due to contemporary arguments for value-laden science in light of inductive risk (Douglas 2000; 2009;

Elliott 2011; Steel 2010; Steele 2012). Epistemologists have increasingly advocated a role for moral and practical values in assessing knowledge claims in light of uncertainty and risk of error as well (DeRose 1992; Fantl and McGrath 2009; Hawthorne 2004; Stanley 2005). They take

1 Others do, of course, offer arguments for goal-oriented epistemology and several of those arguments are discussed in this chapter (Douglas 2000; Rudner 1953). I hope to provide further and perhaps new support for the view.

98 Rudner's argument, or something very much like it, to support the general epistemic conclusion that our values, ethical and otherwise, must inform epistemic standards in some way. Though not specifically concerned with scientific justification, these epistemologists contend that knowledge is importantly related to practical reasoning about action. Some propose that knowing some proposition P involves being rational to act as if P were true (Fantl and McGrath 2009) or being appropriate to use P as a premise in practical reasoning (Hawthorne 2004; Stanley 2005).

This chapter motivates goal-oriented epistemology by arguing that the traditional view cannot account for the variety of epistemic standards employed in scientific reasoning.

Traditionalists often distinguish between practical and epistemic reasoning without offering a plausible account of science's epistemic standards. If epistemic standards are value-free, either a single criterion of sufficient justification can be applied to all scientific contexts or the variation of epistemic standards across scientific contexts can be explained by something other than value influences. Traditionalists must either offer a univocal epistemic standard, one that all scientific knowledge can be held up to, or explain why epistemic standards vary without appealing to moral or practical values. The chapter begins by introducing Rudner's view and defending it from several traditional responses that distinguish between practical and epistemic reasoning.

After reviewing Rudner's argument, Section 3.1 addresses Isaac Levi's (1960) distinction between practical reasoning, which he believes varies depending on the goals of action, and purely epistemic judgments, which he calls theoretical decisions. I argue that Levi's distinction does not resolve Rudner's question about how to explain the variation in epistemic standards across scientific contexts. Levi neither denies the variability of epistemic standards nor attempts

99 to explain why, in principle, scientists should be allowed to employ different standards at different times.

Richard Jeffrey (1956) argues that while practical decisions about how to apply theories require acceptance, scientists need not make judgments about accepting theories at all. The only epistemic judgments scientists need to make, on his view, regard the probability or likelihood of the theory's truth. Scientists can suspend judgment with regard to the truth of a theory and merely assess likelihoods, rather than judging theories to be sufficiently justified for acceptance. Section

3,2 argues that despite the possibility of relegating decisions of theoretical acceptance or rejection to non-scientists, philosophers still have a duty to describe conditions of sufficient justification. Even if scientists need not decide when they have achieved theoretical knowledge, one of the central tasks of epistemology is to determine how much evidential support is sufficient for knowledge and, hence, when theoretical acceptance is justified.

The distinction between practical and epistemic reasoning does not answer the question that Rudner poses about the sufficiency of evidence. Goal-oriented epistemology explains why scientists often adopt different epistemic standards, while merely distinguishing between practical and epistemic reason leaves this phenomena unexplained. If theoretical justification is value-free, then either epistemic standards do not vary across contexts or the variations can be explained without reference to values. Many traditional responses to Rudner's argument for holism do not argue for either of these claims, however, and therefore do not address the issue holists raise about the sufficiency of evidence. They do not answer the question “How much justification is enough for knowledge?”

100 Section 3.3 details Hugh Lacey's (2005a; 2005b) attempt to account for the various methods of theoretical justification found across different scientific contexts. His arguments also try to save the value-free account of scientific justification by distinguishing between practical standards for theory acceptance, which may be influenced by values, and purely epistemic criteria for belief. According to Lacey, scientists adopt strategies that provide practical standards for scientific methodology, but in principle one can always step outside the strategic assessments of a theory and ask about its purely epistemic justification, which is supposed to be independent of the particular strategies scientists adopt. The distinction between strategic and epistemic standards is meant to save the traditional view of epistemic standards as value-free while conceding that all science is value-laden in practice.

Strategies are, however, the standards scientists actually use. I argue that distinguishing between strategic standards and epistemic standards undermines the epistemic legitimacy of scientific practice. Scientists do not live up to the value-free epistemic standards Lacey proposes, and as a result, either actual scientific methodologies are not epistemically legitimate or strategic standards are, contrary to Lacey's position, genuinely epistemic standards. If the value-laden standards of actual research do not live up to value-free epistemic standards, the theoretical conclusions scientists arrive at in practice are not epistemically justified in the traditional sense.

Thus the traditional value-free account of science is awkwardly irrelevant when it comes to actual science.

The chapter concludes with an examination of one possible value-free explanation for variation in scientific standards. One intuitive reason for paleontologists to adopt weaker

101 standards than epidemiologists is the relative scarcity of paleontological evidence. Criteria of sufficient justification may be altered in light of how much evidence is available to researchers. I argue that moral and practical values exert considerable influence over the availability of evidence so that by relaxing epistemic standards in light of evidential scarcity, traditionalists allow moral and practical values to influence epistemic norms.

The fact that evidential standards vary across scientific contexts provides the best argument for epistemic holism. Some overarching epistemic principles must explain why many different standards are legitimate for science. Traditionalists try to keep values out of epistemic decisions by distinguishing between practical and epistemic reasoning, but in each of the views considered, I argue that traditionalists fail to address the question of sufficient evidential justification in a way that does justice to the contextual variation of epistemic standards in science. Distinguishing standards of sufficient evidence scientists actually use from ideal epistemic standards implies that actual science is epistemically inadequate. Only a value-laden conception of scientific justification explains why the hypotheses scientists accept are justified in light of the evidence they actually have. Unlike Kitcher's argument from theoretical pluralism and underdetermination arguments, the variation of epistemic standards motivates an epistemic role for values in science without running afoul of the problems of motivation and equal legitimacy introduced in Chapter 1 (Section 1.1).

3.1 A Question of Sufficiency

Richard Rudner (1953) argues that moral and practical values alter scientists’ judgments

102 about when the evidence justifies theory acceptance. Epistemic standards, he observes, vary across different areas of scientific practice and what counts as sufficient justification in one scientific context can be insufficient in another. The best explanation for this variation, Rudner claims, is the different moral and practical goals adopted in those contexts. The argument begins with two relatively uncontroversial assumptions about science: 1) That scientific knowledge never achieves certainty, and 2) that some degree of evidential justification must be judged sufficient for knowledge. He then argues that scientists make determinations of evidential sufficiency by appealing to the value or importance of the hypothesis in question:

For, since no scientific hypothesis is every completely verified, in accepting a

hypothesis the scientist must make the decision that the evidence is sufficiently

strong or that the probability is sufficiently high to warrant the acceptance of

the hypothesis. Obviously, our decision regarding the evidence and respecting

how strong is 'strong enough', is going to be a function of the importance, in the

typically ethical sense, of making a mistake in accepting or rejecting the

hypothesis. Thus... if the hypothesis under consideration were to the effect that

a toxic ingredient was not present in lethal quantity, we would require a

relatively high degree of confirmation or confidence before accepting the

hypotheses—for the consequences of making here are exceedingly grave by our

moral standards. On the other hand, if say, our hypothesis stated that, on the

basis of a sample, a certain lot of machine stamped belt buckles was not

103 defective, the degree of confidence we should require would be relatively not

so high. (Rudner 1953, 2)

Like Kitcher's goal-oriented epistemology, Rudner claims that accepting a theory as sufficiently justified by the evidence requires thinking about the actions one intends to take based on acceptance or rejection of the hypothesis in question. Scientific claims have repercussions for action: Scientists judge some food or medication safe for human consumption so that people can make informed decisions about whether or not it should be consumed. Since there is always some risk of error, scientists must decide when the evidence sufficiently justifies a theory by determining what chances of error are acceptable in application. What counts as sufficient justification depends on whether the potential consequences of action based on belief in that theory are acceptable; if the actions are too risky or harmful, the theory is not sufficiently justified. A scientific claim is only justified sufficiently when people have reason to believe they can safely act on the basis of that belief.

Rudner begins with the intuitive premise that scientists must determine some epistemic standards of theory acceptance and observes that in different scientific contexts, different standards apply. Although he takes it as obvious that value judgments explain the variation of epistemic standards, the above example is meant to provide intuitive support for that claim by contrasting epistemic judgments in life threatening contexts with the relatively lax standards of theory acceptance when less urgent values are at stake. Rudner's argument takes the variation of epistemic standards across scientific contexts to motivate a role for values in scientific reasoning

104 and challenges the traditional view to determine standards of sufficient justification without appealing to moral or practical values. If epistemic standards are free of value judgments, either a single value-free standard can serve all scientific contexts or the variation of epistemic standards found in science is explained by something other than values. Defenders of the traditional view of science must explain why different epistemic standards are appropriate in different scientific contexts.

Traditionalists have responded to Rudner's argument by pointing out the difference between acting on a theory as if it were true and accepting a theory as true (Levi 1960; Jeffrey

1956). With regard to Rudner's examples of quality control, where scientists are interested in ensuring the safety of a new drug or food source, Isaac Levi argues that “One could not conclude from this alone that the problem of deciding what to believe is on all fours with decision problems in quality control... In the latter kind of problem, the objectives are 'practical'; in the former, they are 'theoretical'” (Levi 1960, 350). The distinction between practical decisions about how to act and theoretical decisions about what to believe is intended to isolate theoretical or epistemic decisions from the value judgments involved in practical decisions (ibid., 351).

“[W]herever a scientist does not appear to have an objective in mind, nonetheless, one can always be specified– namely, the objective of accepting true answers” (ibid., 350).

Levi argues that it is possible for scientists to make theoretical decisions with regard to the truth or falsity of a theory without considering values. He does not, however, describe specific standards for theory acceptance and, as a result, his response misses the point of

Rudner's argument. Levi must show that some value-free criteria of theory acceptance can be

105 adopted for theoretical decisions. The force of Rudner's argument lies in his demand for an answer to the question of sufficient evidential support. Levi questions Rudner's assumption that epistemic standards vary across scientific contexts by pointing out that all scientists have the goal of accepting true answers, but he does not indicate when scientists are justified in believing they have discovered the truth. “[T]he issue at stake,” Levi points out, “...is whether there is any sense in which a person can meaningfully and consistently be said to accept a hypothesis as true without having a practical objective” (ibid., 350). Levi offers no account of epistemic acceptance to demonstrate the possibility that theory acceptance could be settled with some univocal and value-free epistemic standard, however. He does not show that there is any sense in which a person can be said to justifiably accept a hypothesis without any practical objective. To do so would require value-free criteria of epistemic justification. Without such criteria, merely distinguishing practical from epistemic standards does not address Rudner's challenge. Levi does not answer the question: “How much evidence is sufficient for the acceptance of theories?”

Traditionalists often turn to supposedly epistemic or cognitive values like theoretical simplicity and explanatory scope to guide theoretical decisions without appeal to moral and practical values (Lacey 2005b; McMullin 1982; Steel 2010). “If the scientists... make judgments employing only these broadly epistemic or cognitive values, then there is no necessity for values outside this set to enter the process” (Mitchell 2004, 294). Several problems arise with these values, however. First, scientists may disagree about how to understand and interpret values like theoretical simplicity (Kuhn 1977, Chapter 13; Sober 2001). One theory might posit fewer entities than some rival, for example, while ascribing more complex mechanisms of causal

106 interaction between those objects. Such a theory is more simple with regard to ontological commitment, but posits more causal complexity.

More importantly for those who wish to invoke these values as justifying theories in a way that moral and practical values can not, cognitive values do not always ensure that a theory is more justified or more likely to be true. The natural world is not always simple, and its laws are not always maximally broad in scope. Although it would be convenient if the world could be neatly represented by a few simple and unified truths, scientific theories are often complex and narrowly applicable (Cartwright 1999, 9-17). Cognitive values do make some theories more convenient for inquirers with limited cognitive capacities such as ourselves, however: A simple theory is easier to remember and apply, and theories with broad scope can be readily applied to many different areas of interest, but their cognitive convenience does not ensure epistemic justification in the traditional sense (Douglas 2014, 801). Convenience is a practical matter.

Finally, as Kuhn recognized, different epistemic values can support different conclusions

(1977, Chapter 13). The most accurate theory many not always be the most simple or broadly applicable theory. The most simple solution to a theoretical problem may not always apply to broadest array of phenomena. Because these values often come into conflict with one another, they cannot unambiguously decided when a claim is sufficiently supported by the evidence. It is not sufficient for traditionalists to formulate a list of theoretical virtues that might influence epistemic judgments, they must specify how those values are to resolve questions of evidential sufficiency. Given the tensions between these values, it is unclear how considerations of simplicity, explanatory scope, or precision could unequivocally determine how much evidential

107 support is sufficient for epistemic justification.

3.2 The Variation of Epistemic Standards

Levi rightly observes, however, that standards for assessing the adequacy of belt buckles are not scientific standards in the ordinary sense; Rudner's example of quality control in the production of consumer goods is not a strong argument for his conclusion. A stronger argument would assess the variety of epistemic standards in fields like biology or physics. To the extent that the sciences do exhibit diverse epistemic standards, not just in application but also in purely theoretical judgments of acceptability, a case can be made for Rudner's conclusion that scientists must always make value judgments in accepting theories as sufficiently justified. Proponents of values in science have increasingly offered such examples of value-laden epistemic standards in genuinely scientific contexts (Douglas 2000; 2009; Kitcher 2001; 2011a; Longino 2002a).

Kitcher believes one problem with the traditional view of science is its assumption that there could be a single formalized account of justification for all of the methodologically diverse areas of science (2011a, 154). Scientists concerned with the identification of biological taxa, he points out, employ different standards depending on their goals and values (Kitcher 2001, 48-

50). The variety of standards for species identification suggests that different scientific contexts require different levels of justification depending on their ethical and practical significance. In some sciences, like paleontology, our best theories are not all that likely because evidence is extremely limited. No theories of the origins life or the extinction of the dinosaurs is going to meet the rigorous epistemic standards of, say, experimental physics or some medical sciences.

108 Whereas precise and repeated observation of the effects of new medications is mandatory, ancient evolutionary events, even relatively recent evolutionary occurrences, cannot be directly witnessed. In general, historical sciences like archeology and paleontology adopt very different epistemic standards than experimental sciences like physics, chemistry, and pharmacology

(Cleland 2002). Because paleonotological evidence is limited, paleontologists would have very little to talk about if they were held to the same standards as experimental sciences. The justification of theories is not, Kitcher suggests, universal across the sciences, but a matter of applying local or tradition-relative standards of scientific objectivity (Kitcher 2001, 39).

Helen Longino provides examples of variation in epistemic standards as well (2002a, chapter 8). Even within a single scientific discipline, she observes, epistemic standards may vary.

Laboratory and field ecologists investigate the same ecological phenomena, for instance, but they disagree about whether highly controlled laboratory experiments or natural environments provide better evidence for ecological theories (Longino 2002a, 178-179). Field ecology gives a better understanding of how actual environments work, which is useful for our attempts to alter natural environments, but laboratory studies isolate organisms from their complex natural environments in order to reach precise understanding of a single causal variable. Laboratory evidence and observations in the field offer two kinds of evidence for ecological claims, and different ecological practices rely on different kinds of evidence.

The precise understanding of isolated causes that laboratory evidence provide is more useful for applications that aim to alter particular causes rather than entire networks of ecological interactions. Laboratory studies may be best for determining the ecological influence of a certain

109 chemical compound, for example, because controlled experiments allow ecologists to determine exactly how a chemical affects organisms without worries about unrecognized environmental influences. When an animal dies after exposure to some chemical in the lab, scientists can be reasonably confident about the cause of death. Field experiments, by contrast, risk confusing the effects of exposure with some other causal agent; perhaps some unobserved actor has coincidentally killed the animal after exposure to the compound tested. Laboratory evidence is superior to field observations for determining the direct ecological effects of one substance on one kind of organism.

Ecological management, on the other hand, requires an understanding of complex environmental interactions that laboratory studies cannot illuminate. Ecological conservation requires understanding the dynamic interactions between organisms in their natural environments. Because laboratories cannot duplicate natural ecosystems, these ecological relationships can only be observed in the field. Error in conservation practices is more likely to occur if scientists rely on laboratory evidence. Introducing a single causal variable like poison is likely to have many unintended consequences for the larger environment, a considerable risk for environmental conservationists. Environmental consequences are not pressing for those only concerned with eliminating pests, however. In developing a poison for pest control, laboratory evidence avoids mistaking some uncontrolled environmental variable for the poison's effectiveness. Field evidence avoids overlooking relevant environmental consequence. Different kinds of evidence facilitate different ecological goals and Longino concludes, based on observations like these, that “the kind of knowledge a community seeks, the purposes for which

110 it seeks it – that is, the uses to which knowledge will be put – guide the development of the community’s standards” (Longino 2002a, 188).

One way of resisting this argument is to deny that epistemic standards vary. In defending

Rudner's argument, James Leach attempts to demonstrate the difficulty involved in setting a single standard for all theoretical judgments. Since Levi offers no account of evidential sufficiency, Leach considers a rule that recommends theory acceptance when the probability of its truth is over 50%, a standard he attributes to Rudolph Carnap (Leach 1968, 103)10. That standard is much too liberal. If any hypothesis is acceptable when it is more than 50% likely, we can know that any flipping of an American quarter will come up tails. Because an American quarter is slightly heavier on the heads side of the coin, there is a slightly greater than 50% probability of the heads side landing face down, and hence the tails side landing face up. Since a result of tails is more likely than a result of heads before any flip, according to this rule of theory acceptance we should always accept the theory that the next flip will come up tails. We are not, however, justified in believing in advance that a coin flip will have a certain result simply because that outcome is more likely than not to occur. Greater than 50% likelihood is not a universally acceptable criterion for theoretical justification.

In July of 2012 physicists announced the discovery of a new fundamental particle, likely the long-sought Higgs boson. The announcement came when scientists made experimental observations that indicated the presence of a previously unobserved particle to a level of

10 The attribution is questionable. I use this example only to demonstrate some of the problems likely to arise from adopting a univocal standard of evidential sufficiency. Isaac Levi (1960, 353) contends that Carnap preferred the “odds-maker” view of science, which denies the need for epistemic standards of sufficient evidence. I address this view in the following section (3.3).

111 statistical confidence known as 5 sigma (Cho 2012). Because 5 sigma ensures a high level of justification, a likelihood of greater than 99.99%, it is commonly used as a standard for deciding when a claim is supported enough to be deemed a new discovery in particle physics. Many scientific claims outside of experimental physics are unable to live up to such high standards, however. While the scientific community has spent billions of dollars constructing particle accelerators in order to observe the effects of fundamental particles like bosons, many phenomena remain beyond the reach of human cognitive ability. Scientists do not have access to the distant past or remote corners of the universe, yet that does not prevent them from accepting theories about the origins of the universe, to take one example. Although 5 sigma and Leach's standard of greater than 50% likelihood are only two of many possible criteria for theory acceptance, any single standard of sufficient evidence is likely to encounter scientific counterexamples because different levels of evidential support are accepted in different scientific contexts.

The challenge to the traditional value-free account of epistemic justification is to make sense of the various standards scientists actually use to evaluate theories. By allowing epistemic standard to change in light of practical interests, goal-oriented epistemology accounts for the relaxation of epistemic standards when there is little risk in doing so. The traditional view is unable concede that the values and goals of scientists alter epistemic standards lest they violate the division between practical and epistemic reasoning. If the justification of scientific knowledge is independent of the practical goals of science, epistemic standards cannot vary in light of those goals. Rudner's question, to reiterate, is about how to determine standards of

112 sufficient evidential support. Traditionalists need either an alternative explanation for the variation of epistemic standards or an argument to show that there is no such variation of standards across scientific contexts. Merely distinguishing between practical and epistemic decisions does not explain why scientific standards of justification vary from context to context and does not answer the question “how much evidential justification is enough for scientific knowledge?” Some reasonable value-free criteria of epistemic justification must be provided.

3.3 Suspension of Belief

Another response to Rudner's argument denies that scientists need to accept or reject hypotheses at all, thus avoiding the need to specify epistemic criteria. Richard Jeffrey points out that Rudner's argument took conditional form: “If it is the job of scientists to accept and reject hypotheses, then he must make value judgments,” but scientists might not be obliged to make theoretical decisions about what we know, they might simply assign probabilities to hypotheses and leave the accepting or rejecting to those who must act on those hypotheses (Jeffrey 1956,

237; Steele 2012, 891, 896-897). According to Jeffrey, it is not the scientists' job to accept or reject theories so they need not consider the consequences of acceptance or rejection. Jeffrey's theory is sometimes called the “odds maker” view of science because it requires scientists to do no more than attach odds or probabilities of truth to hypotheses. As James Leach explains, according to Jeffrey:

113 The scientist must seek no goals, not even truth. Since he neither accepts nor

rejects hypotheses, he has no need, qua scientist, to replace doubt by true belief.

At most he assigns degrees of confirmation or probability to hypotheses so that

others, decision makers, can decide as to the truth or falsity of the beliefs.

(Leach 1968, 94)

Jeffrey goes on to argue against Rudner's theory based on the observation that different applications of theories will have different consequences for acceptance. As Rudner points out, in highly risky contexts scientists need to keep their epistemic standards of theory acceptance high, but lower risk contexts will allow lower epistemic standards. Jeffrey, who assumes that epistemic standards must be univocal, concludes that “if the scientist is to maximize good he should refrain from accepting or rejecting hypotheses, since he cannot possibly do so in such a way as to optimize every decision which may be made on the basis of those hypotheses” (Jeffrey 1956,

245). Consider a hypothesis asserting that the polio vaccine is safe for use on humans in contrast to one about the safety of polio vaccinations for other animals. Since human safety is more important than animal safety, Jeffrey reasons, less evidential support is needed for veterinarians to accept the hypothesis of safety than for medical doctors:

One cannot, by accepting or rejecting the hypothesis about the polio vaccine, do

justice both to the problem of the physician who is trying to decide whether to

inoculate a child, and the veterinarian who has a similar problem about a

114 monkey. To accept or reject that hypotheses [sic] once and for all is to introduce

an unnecessary conflict between the interests of the physician and the

veterinarian. (Ibid., 245)

Since a single criterion of theory acceptance is impossible, the argument goes, scientists should refrain from employing any criteria at all and give up on making epistemic judgments about the acceptability of scientific hypotheses.

Jeffrey's argument turns on the assumption that theory acceptance cannot be dynamic.

Either epistemic standards are univocal across all contexts or they are faulty. Rudner clearly rejects this assumption, however. His goal-oriented epistemology holds that standards of theory acceptance do vary across contexts depending on the applications a theory might be used for.

Jeffrey, on the other hand, assumes that acceptance and rejection is a “once and for all” affair.

Thus Rudner might concede that “it is certainly meaningless to talk of the acceptance of the hypothesis... provided the information has a number of different uses...the many uses of information imply many different criteria for the 'acceptance' or 'rejection' of hypotheses”

(Churchman 1956, 248-249). Rudner's thesis is only problematic if a variable theory of epistemic justification, one that alters epistemic standards from context to context, is itself unacceptable.

Jeffrey does not, however, offer an argument for the conclusion that epistemic criteria cannot vary across contexts.

What about Jeffrey's contention that scientists ought not accept or reject hypotheses at all? On his view, scientists can avoid epistemic decisions by simply assigning probabilities to

115 hypotheses and leaving the acceptance or rejection of theories to those who must act on them in practical contexts. Scientists are unable to avoid epistemic judgments in practice, however, they must make decisions about which research to participate in, which research projects to fund, or which research should be made available to the public (Kitcher 2001; 2011a). Practicing scientists participate in research programs they find promising and projects they believe are likely produce true theories. When evaluating the work of other scientists in the process of peer review, individuals are expected to make judgments about the acceptability of the hypothesis proposed. Scientists cannot treat all theories equally regardless of their justification. In practice, scientists must decide whether or not some claim is sufficiently justified for further investigation, funding, or recognition in public forums like journals and conferences.

Even if scientists do not need standards for theory acceptance in order to judge the epistemic adequacy of the hypotheses they study, it is nevertheless appropriate for philosophers to demand such criteria. Although Rudner intended to show that scientists themselves must set epistemic standards, it is not necessary for making the broader epistemological point. One kind of question philosophers, if not scientists, are concerned with is questions about knowledge and when we can reasonably claim to know some hypothesis. The central goal of epistemology is, after all, to describe conditions for knowledge. The issue at stake is whether there is an explicable distinction between justified and unjustifed belief at all, not whether scientists must always decide whether or not to believe some claim. Scientists may avoid epistemic judgment in the course of their work, but that does not obviate our responsibility to distinguish justified from unjustified hypotheses. An adequate account of the epistemology of science must account for

116 scientific knowledge – the body of claims we are justified in believing are true, based on the evidence. Even if scientists are merely odds makers, philosophers must address the question of sufficient justification in science. Like Levi, however, Jeffrey offers no account of evidential sufficiency to demonstrate the possibility that theory acceptance could be settled with some value-free epistemic standard.

A similar problem arises with one of Susan Haack's argument against values in scientific reasoning. She points out that while inquiry sometimes requires the provisional acceptance of a theory, epistemic justification does not always require acceptance or rejection. “[W]e don't 'have to accept something'; if the evidence is inadequate, why not just acknowledge that we don't know?” (Haack 1998, 110, emphasis added). “[U]nless and until more evidence is available, scientists had better suspend judgment” (ibid., 128). We cannot suspend judgment on all scientific matters, however, so there must be some threshold of evidential justification that is sufficient for belief. The central issue, as Haack's pointed question indicates, is how much justification is adequate for knowledge. Without a theory about what constitutes sufficient evidence, one that can do justice to the many different standards found across different scientific applications and disciplines, the injunction to suspend judgment leaves scientific knowledge unaccounted for. Because sufficient justification is a necessary condition for knowledge, an account of sufficient justification is a necessary condition for an account of scientific knowledge.

Without the former we are left without an account of the latter.

Like Jeffrey's odds-maker view of science, which merely assigns probabilities of truth to knowledge claims, and Levi's distinction between practical and theoretical decisions, Haack's

117 argument is incomplete because it does not specify how probable or justified a theory must be to qualify as knowledge. Unlike goal-oriented epistemology, the traditional view does not answer the difficult questions about sufficiency of evidence and traditionalists often fail to provide arguments to show that epistemic standards could be determined independent of moral or practical values. Merely insisting that practical and epistemic decisions are separable does not explain why epistemic standards vary from one scientific context to another or shed light on how to determine what those standards should be.

Traditionalists like Haack, Levi, and Jeffrey distinguish between practical and epistemic judgments in order to undermine holists' contention that epistemic standards vary from context to context depending on the goals of inquiry. What changes, the traditionalist argues, is practical standards for action, not epistemic standards of justification. They overlook the central problem that motivates Rudner to adopt a value-laden conception of epistemic justification, however, which is to account for the variability of epistemic standards. Unless and until traditionalists can offer an account of epistemic justification that does justice to the varieties of epistemic standards scientists employ without appealing to their non-epistemic goals, there is no viable alternative to epistemic holism. Philosophers cannot simply play the skeptic and suspend epistemic judgment on all scientific claims. Criteria for judgments about the sufficiency of evidence are necessary to decide when scientific claims are sufficiently justified for belief.

3.4 Strategic Acceptance and Epistemic Justification

One way of defending the value-free view is to concede that, in practice, scientific

118 standards are influenced by ethical and practical values. Hugh Lacey, for example, tries to reconcile the fact that scientists judge theories by different standards depending on the goals of their research with a traditional view of epistemology as value-free (Lacey 2005a; 2005b). Even if practical and epistemic reasoning interact in practice, they might be distinguished in principle.

While Rudner's examples of quality control in medicine and industrial manufacturing raise questions about how to apply scientific claims in practice, purely epistemic standards may be distinguished from standards of appropriate application.

A similar distinction between epistemic principle and scientific practice might undermine

Kitcher's contention that no science is purely epistemic; value-free epistemology does not require value-free scientific practices. In order to motivate goal-oriented epistemology, holists must show that epistemic standards cannot be determined independent of moral and practical values.

Demonstrating the value-laden nature of scientific practice does not by itself establish the epistemic necessity of value judgments. Scientists may accept hypotheses for their own scientific purposes, using practical acceptance criteria developed specifically for that specific research context, while philosophers are concerned with purely epistemic judgments about which hypotheses are justifiably believed. Hugh Lacey argues that the methodologies scientists adopt in practice are contextual and value-laden, not strictly speaking epistemic.

[T]here are plenty of legitimate interactions between science and ethical and

social values, concerning, for example, setting the direction and determining

the legitimacy of applied research and applications, the ethics of experimental

119 research, and providing motivations to engage in research on certain problems,

even making judgments about the adequacy of available evidence and

appraising the testimony of scientific experts. The proponents of 'science is

value free' readily accept all this. (Lacey 2005a, 28)

On Lacey's view, it is important to distinguish between the value-free epistemic assessments of theoretical acceptability and the reasons scientists come to accept theories in practice. “The acceptability of [a theory] is not a matter for social explanation only its actual acceptance is” (Lacey 2005b, 978. Emphasis added). Lacey distinguishes between three logically independent considerations: Strategic questions are about the actual methods of confirmation scientists use (Lacey 2005a, section 1.3). Epistemic questions are about the acceptability of a theory independent of the methods actually used to justify it. Both should be distinguished from questions about how to use theories in application (ibid., 76-78). Because questions of application are practical decisions about how to act, not epistemic questions about what to believe, the distinction salient to goal-oriented epistemology is between strategic and epistemic theory acceptance.

Social values may provide a compelling reason to adopt a particular kind of

strategy... . In practice, this may mean: adopt strategies under which valued

kinds of possibilities (if there are any) can be systematically identified and the

means for realizing them discovered, or that have the potential to produce

120 results that, on application, can further the interests defined by the values.

(Lacey 2005a, 29)

Lacey concedes that the standards scientists actually use, what he calls strategic standards, vary in light of non-epistemic values. Paleontologists, for example, may identify species by their appearances for practical convenience even though morphology is epistemically a weak indicator of species membership. Morphological standards provide a research strategy that furthers the interests of paleontologists, but for Lacy their use in scientific practice does not ensure their epistemic legitimacy. The epistemic sufficiency of morphological evidence must be evaluated independently of practical goals. Because traditionalists can concede that scientific practice is value-laden while insisting that epistemic standards are value-free, showing that all scientific practices are informed by value judgments does not by itself motivate epistemic holism. No matter how many examples of value-laden science holists offer, even in supposedly pure sciences like physics and chemistry, traditionalists can always deny the significance of values for purely epistemic judgments independent of particular scientific methodologies.

Strategies set evidential standards for scientific practice. They determine not only the adequacy of available evidence but “the relevant kinds of empirical data to seek out and report, and the phenomena and aspects of them that are to be observed and experimented upon” (ibid.,

3). In strategic scientific contexts, a theory is “provisionally entertained, pursued with a view towards its development or revision, subjected to testing... used instrumentally in other inquiries, etc.” (ibid., 78). While scientists may make strategic decisions to accept a theory as adequately

121 justified according to the methodology they adopt, according to Lacey epistemic judgments require impartiality. “The moment of deciding to adopt a strategy may be logically separated from that of choice to accept or reject a theory... so that commitment to impartiality can be maintained at the latter moment even though social values may have a legitimate role at the first moment” (ibid., 5).

Unlike Jeffrey's argument that scientists need not accept or reject theories at all, Lacey's view explains the judgments of evidential sufficiency that scientists actually make by relegating them to the strategic or practical sphere of scientific reasoning. Strategic decisions about how to confirm theories in practice are made logically prior to epistemic judgments, which are only made after all the evidence has been collected. Though moral and practical values influence the adoption of particular strategies, “[a]t the second moment all that matters is whether the cognitive values are manifested in the light of available empirical data to a sufficiently high degree” (Lacey 2005b, 980).

Distinguishing between the strategic criteria of scientific practice and epistemic principles explains the variation of standards across scientific contexts. On Lacey's view, only strategic standards vary, but he does not say what the value-free standards of epistemic principle are. The pressing question that Lacey must answer is how much evidence is required to impartially justify theory acceptance in purely epistemic contexts. What, on his view, counts as a

“sufficiently high degree” of epistemic justification? Strategies determine how much and what kinds of evidence are necessary for provisional acceptence, but impartiality requires epistemic standards that transcend the strategic standards scientists adopt in practice. The adequacy of

122 Lacey's view, in light of Rudner's argument, rests on the extent to which he can explicate a satisfactory account of value-free epistemic judgments of acceptability.

Lacey calls a hypothesis epistemically acceptable “if and only if it manifests the cognitive values to a suitably high degree, according to the highest standards, in the light of relevant available empirical data” (Lacey 2005a, 23-24). The highest possible standard would be certainty, but given that certainty is unobtainable some lesser threshold for sufficient justification must be established. The problem with this “highest standard” approach is that different sciences have radically different standards. Knowledge of ancient evolutionary history and far off reaches of the cosmos will not meet the high epistemic standards that some fields of medicine and physics require because relatively little evidence is available for claims about spatiotemporally remote facts. Subjecting all scientific claims to the highest possible standards opens the door to skepticism about much of our historical and cosmological knowledge. Because scientific standards vary, holding all science to the standards of, say, experimental physics would render many scientific claims insufficiently justified, discounting large bodies of scientific knowledge.

Take Kitcher's example of different standards for identifying species: The physical appearances of organisms are only weakly indicative of species membership. There are more reliable ways to classify organisms than merely looking at their morphological features. On one plausible interpretation of Lacey's view, because paleontologists often rely on morphological evidence exclusively, they must not know what species their fossilized specimens belong to.

Because paleontological evidence is weaker than the highest possible standard would allow, paleontologists must admit that their classifications are not sufficiently justified. On Lacey's

123 theory, they only strategically accept such claims for practical purposes; they are not necessarily justified in the epistemic sense. The entire goal of classifying long extinct organisms may turn out to be epistemically fruitless because the limitations of evidence do not allow paleontology to live up to the highest possible standards.

The problem is that strategic beliefs are adopted in order to justify further scientific claims. Paleontologists assume morphology reliably indicates species membership in order to identify fossilized organisms, and if their assumptions about morphological evidence are unjustified, so are their classificatory practices. A sufficiently justified conclusion about species membership cannot be drawn from an insufficiently justified premise about species identification. If strategic standards do not live up to the highest possible epistemic standards, the standards scientists adopt in practice are epistemically illegitimate, on Lacey's view. By differentiating the highest epistemic standards from the relatively weak strategic norms of scientific practice, Lacey implies that a good deal of actual science does not satisfy purely epistemic standards. Distancing epistemic criteria from the actual standards of scientific practice undermines the epistemic credibility of those practices.

One option is for Lacey to bite this bullet and accept that scientific claims are often unjustified because scientists rarely adopt sufficiently high strategy-independent standards of evidential sufficiency. On that view, belief in scientific theories is only justified on the rare occasion that one consults all of the relevant evidence and adopts the highest possible standard of sufficient evidence, whatever that may be. Practicing scientists, who rarely bother to consider all the evidence and usually adopt value-laden strategic standards, are rarely justified in believing

124 scientific hypotheses. It would seem to follow that non-scientists, who are seldom in a position to consult all the relevant data, are rarely justified in believing scientific claims either. Lacey's conception of epistemic justification as answering to only the highest possible standards of evidential support makes justification, and therefore scientific knowledge, unobtainable for most.

It reserves knowledge and understanding for only those that have taken the time to gather all of the evidence, know how best to interpret that evidence, and hold themselves to the highest value- free standard.

If the strategic methodologies scientists adopt are often epistemically insufficient, the epistemic status of our ordinary non-scientific beliefs about the world may be threatened as well.

Science is our most rigorous attempt to systematically gather evidence for the justification of empirical claims. As Imre Lakatos points out, “Knowledge in Latin is scientia, and science came to be the name of the most respectable kind of knowledge” (1978, 1). Denying the epistemic adequacy of strategic scientific methodologies is even more problematic for beliefs that are justified using less than scientific methods. If the epistemic standards of practicing scientists are lax, lay standards can only be negligent by comparison. By raising epistemic standards beyond practical attainability in most contexts, Lacy undermines the vast majority of our putative knowledge about the world. Knowledge and understanding are exceedingly rare on his view, and they are practically unobtainable for anyone without access to all of the evidence and the expert training required to analyze it properly.

Setting aside, for the moment, the above concerns about raising epistemic standards above the attainable limits of either ordinary or scientific practice, the traditional view is not

125 redeemed by Lacey's distinction alone. Because some scientific disciplines require lower epistemic standards than others, even purely epistemic criteria must vary across scientific contexts. Traditionalists must still supply value-free criteria of sufficient justification that account for all scientific knowledge, and no single standard is likely to suffice. Lacey may not be committed to prescribing a single epistemic standard for all sciences, however, as he does say a theory is epistemically justified “according to the highest standards, in light of relevant available empirical data” (Lacey 2005a, 23-24, emphasis added). Epistemic standards might vary in light of the limited availability of evidence rather than the influence of values. Paleontologists rely on physical appearances primarily because other forms of evidence are simply unavailable. Because genetic material does not usually survive in fossils long enough to be retrieved, the fossilized remains of an organism's basic anatomy are the only evidence paleontologists have access to. If epistemic standards change in light of the availability of evidence, the apparent variation of scientific standards might be explained without appeal to values. Although Lacey does not say just how epistemic standards are affected by the limited availability of evidence, his view may offer an alternative explanation for the variation of epistemic standards. Judgments of sufficient justification may change depending on how much and what kinds of evidence are available rather than always adhering to a univocal highest possible standard.

It is unclear whether Lacy intends for epistemic standards to be univocal or dynamic. On the one hand, he claims that epistemic evaluation requires the highest possible standard. On the other hand, he does not explicitly claim that one standard can account for all scientific disciplines or contexts. Lacey mentions the availability of evidence as a relevant consideration but does not

126 spell out how, or even if, the availability of evidence affects judgments about what counts as the highest possible standard. The following section takes up the view that value-free epistemic standards may vary in light of how much evidence is available. It provides a plausible explanation for why paleontologists adopt the epistemic standards they do; paleontologists rely on morphological evidence from fossils because that is, for the most part, the only evidence available. In sum, however, Lacey's suggestion that epistemic justification requires the highest possible standards is hopelessly inadequate. At best it is a very large promissory note for an as yet unspecified value-free standard of sufficient justification. At worst it undermines the epistemic credibility of any scientific knowledge that does not live up to the highest possible theoretical standards.

3.5 The Limited Availability of Evidence

On the proposed view, epistemic standards vary in light of the availability of evidence so that when little evidence is available, epistemic standards can be lowered. The available evidence cannot always be sufficient, however. Sometimes scientists do not have enough evidence to reach a firm conclusion. If the availability of evidence too strongly influences standards of sufficient evidence, there is no reason to suspend judgment– epistemic standards should always be lowered to accommodate the dearth of evidence. Unless there is some minimum threshold for sufficient justification, which Lacey does not propose, tying epistemic standards to availability of evidence might undermine the very coherence of insufficient evidence. If standards of evidential sufficiency are strictly determined by availability of evidence, the available evidence must

127 always be sufficient.

Lacey says a knowledge claim meets the highest epistemic standard when “it can be considered settled, not needing further empirical support, so that further inquiry concerning its confirmation or disconfirmation is irrelevant, since all that could be expected from it is repetition of what has already been accomplished” (Lacey 2005a, 24). In principle, all scientific claims are uncertain and subject to further review in light of new evidence (Lacey2005b, 981). Because there is a limit on how much evidence is available in practice, however, there comes a point when further investigation can yield no new information. Although this sounds like a strong epistemic requirement, many propositions might meet this standard without being highly justified. Constrained by the practical availability of evidence, Lacey's standard for knowledge is sometimes unduly lax. A theory cannot be supported by further evidence when the evidence available in practice is exhausted, but the available evidence is often quickly exhausted in fields like paleontology and archeology. Some theories about the ancient past may be impossible to further support with additional inquiry just because there is no more evidence available. In that case, Lacey's standard will consider a claim epistemically justified with very little evidential support simply because very little evidence can be found. Scientists are not always sufficiently justified just because further inquiry could not produce more justification.

Scientists have very little archeological evidence about the earliest human tool use, for example (Longino and Doell 1983). We do not know which gender developed tools first, or even if one gender was responsible at all. Perhaps the origin of tools was not gendered and tools were invented by men and women in concert. Suppose some scientist found minimal evidence for the

128 claim that men invented tools without the contribution of women and that this scientist has found the only surviving piece of evidence relevant to the question of which gender was responsible for tool use. In that case, the belief that men invented tools first is settled in Lacey's sense because further inquiry could never provide additional evidence for or against the claim. No additional evidence will ever be available. Yet, in this hypothetical instance, the claim that men invented tools is minimally justified. It may not even be likely that men invented tools despite the evidence. The evidence merely indicates that men are slightly more likely than women to have invented tools, not that it is very likely at all. It may be much more likely that neither men nor women were exclusively responsible for the invention of tools. Just because there is some minimal piece of evidence for a claim and no further evidence for or against it is available, it does not follow that the claim should qualify as scientific knowledge. When very little evidence is available, scientists risk drawing hasty conclusions with flawed information. Constraining epistemic justification to the availability of evidence does not always hold scientists to the highest epistemic standards.

Perhaps traditionalists can find a way to reconcile the intuition that science should be held to the highest epistemic standards with the need to lower epistemic standards when little evidence is available. They might, once again, try to specify a minimal standard that all knowledge must satisfy. The larger problem for tying traditionally value-free epistemic standards to the availability of evidence is that moral and practical values have an impact on what evidence is available.

The limited availability of evidence is often a practical problem, not merely an epistemic

129 concern. In principle, all kinds of practically inaccessible evidence may someday become available; new technologies will lead researchers to new forms of evidence that are, in principle, available today even if they cannot yet be accessed. Given enough time, energy, and financial resources, many phenomena that are today unobservable will become accessible (Devitt 2002,

45). Although genetic material rarely survives fossilization long, for instance, new techniques of

DNA collection and analysis have recently allowed scientists to analyze the genome of horses that lived over half a million years ago (Millar and Lambert 2013). Someday, genetic evidence might be available for the classification of dinosaurs and other organisms that paleontologists can only identify through morphology today. If availability of evidence is to provide a value-free explanation for the variation of epistemic standards, traditionalists must determine the extent to which evidence is unavailable in principle, not due to merely practical and technological limitations.

Sometimes evidence may be available in principle but not worth the time and resources to unearth. Undiscovered evidence is often unavailable to the scientific community in part because of practical and financial constraints on inquiry. Although decisions about what phenomena to investigate are practical, they have epistemic consequences. Altering epistemic standards based on merely practical limitations of research violates the traditional distinction between value-free justification and value-laden practice. Strategic acceptance might depend on what evidence is actually available in practice, but impartial acceptance should depend entirely on the evidence that exists independently of whether or not scientists expend the time and effort access to it.

Constrained only by what evidence is available in principle, however, value-free

130 epistemic standards are too stringent. In principle, we can always devote more time, energy, and money to the discovery of new evidence. If we are justified in accepting the theories we do, our justification comes from the evidence available in practice, not the evidence we might in principle obtain; scientists are unable to justify theories with evidence they do not have. If epistemic standards are independent of considerations about what evidence is available in practice, they do not explain why the scientific community accepts the hypotheses they do.

Again, distancing epistemic criteria from the standards of actual scientific practice undermines the epistemic credibility of scientific practice.

There are times when it is possible to collect more evidence although it is not worth the time and resources to do so. A wealth of archeological evidence exists beneath modern cities, for instance, but it would be impractical and immoral to destroy homes and businesses in order to gather it. Evidence often goes undiscovered due to practical and moral constraints on research methodology. Examples of immoral experimentation on human subjects are often cited case.

When scientists refuse to engage in some research practice on ethical grounds or because of practical inconveniences, they limit the availability of evidence. Because some evidence is unavailable due to practical and moral constraints on inquiry, constraining epistemic standards to the availability of evidence violates the distinction between strategic value-laden standards and value-free epistemic theory acceptance. If epistemic standards are constrained by the practical availability of data, Lacey's distinction between impartial acceptance and value-laden strategic acceptance collapses. Without that practical constraint on Lacey's epistemic theory, however, the highest epistemic standards must be adopted for scientific disciplines and hypotheses that are not

131 capable of meeting them. The variety of epistemic standards found in different scientific investigations might be explained in part by the availability of evidence, but what evidence is available is heavily influenced by moral and practical constraints on scientific research.

Although Lacey's distinction between strategic acceptance and epistemic justification accounts for the provisional acceptance of theories by scientists engaged in particular research projects, it does not explain why we should consider strategic standards sufficient for scientific knowledge. If scientists know the things they claim to know, they are sufficiently justified according to the evidence they have and the methodologies they employ. Distinguishing epistemic acceptability from the judgments of acceptability scientists make in practice distances actual knowledge claims from ideal standards. The further removed epistemic standards are from the actual practices of science, the more reason we have to believe that actual science does not live up to those standards. There is a tension in claiming scientific hypotheses are sufficiently justified even though the justification scientists actually have does not live up to philosophically respectable, value-free, epistemic standards. Some kinds of scientific knowledge simply do not live up to the highest possible epistemic standards. That is why scientists adopt context specific strategies rather than always relying on the highest possible standards. Lacey's theory can account for why scientists adopt different evidential standards, but it does not explain why hypotheses produced under these different strategies can be considered sufficiently justified in the epistemic sense.

132 3.6 Conclusion

As Lacey acknowledges, scientists' standards for theory acceptance vary from context to context in part because different scientific projects have different moral practical goals. Rudner first demonstrated the point by showing that scientists do consider the practical consequences of their theories and adjust their epistemic standards accordingly. While traditionalists have tried to distinguish between practical and epistemic judgments in order to save the value-free picture of scientific justification, those arguments have failed to account for the phenomena Rudner wants to explain. Jeffrey, Levi, and Haack do not attempt to explain why it is that scientists' standards vary across contexts. They merely insist that epistemic standards are univocal. Because the standards of actual science are not univocal, they are unable to explain why the theoretical standards of practicing scientists should be considered epistemically legitimate. If scientific practices were logically independent of questions about what constitutes a well justified theory, we would have no reason to believe that science produces highly justified theories at all. Lacey has a nuanced view about how traditionalists can explain the variation of scientific standards in practice while still maintaining a value-free account of theoretical justification. As a result of his distinction between strategic scientific practice and epistemic principle, however, the actual theoretical standards scientists use, which Lacey concedes are informed by values, do not live up to the value-free epistemic standards he advocates.

Susan Haack argues that “Standards of better and worse evidence and standards of better- and worse-conducted inquiry are often confused” (1998, 105). Lacey's distinction between strategic standards and epistemic principles is similarly intended to distinguish standards for

133 proper scientific practice from epistemic judgments of sufficient evidential support. But strategic standards for good inquiry and evidential standards of sufficient justification are importantly related: One of the most important goals of good scientific inquiry is to produce highly justified scientific claims. The adequacy of scientific methodologies cannot be judged without assessing their epistemic credibility. Divorcing considerations of methodology from epistemic principles overlooks the fact that standards of good inquiry are intended to produce theories that meet evidential standards of justification. Experimental procedures must be followed closely not just because violating them would be impractical or immoral, although that may certainly be the case.

Errors in execution produce epistemically flawed conclusions as well. Practical and epistemic reasoning in science cannot be isolated from one another. Scientific knowledge must be produced within moral and practical constraints. Scientific practices must be epistemically legitimate.

The ways scientists justify their beliefs are dictated in part by the values and goals they adopt. Because scientific knowledge is a paradigm case of epistemic justification, perhaps the paradigm case, what goes for science, I suggest, goes for knowledge generally. What counts as sufficient justification for any claim depends on the value of that theory for further action.

Rudner's argument points to a plurality of epistemic standards as motivation to goal- oriented epistemology. Because traditionalists must explain why different epistemic standards are legitimate in different scientific contexts, proponents of values in science need only to show that epistemic standards vary and that traditionalists cannot explain this variation without appeal to moral and practical values. The variety of epistemic standards found across scientific contexts motivates epistemic holism without appeal to theoretical pluralism or the underdetermination

134 arguments that many holists employ.

Although Kitcher's arguments about the impact of moral, practical, and financial decisions on scientific research do not themselves motivate his goal-oriented epistemology, they take on new significance when viewed in light of a particular argument for value-freedom. If traditionalists wish to explain the variation of epistemic standards by appealing to the limited availability of evidence, any decision that limits the availability of evidence becomes epistemically relevant. Moral and practical constraints on inquiry and decisions about what to investigate influence epistemic standards by altering the amount of evidence available.

Traditionalists cannot explain the variation of epistemic standards without appeal to moral or practical values.

135 Chapter 4: Getting to Know Microbial Species

Chapters 2 and 3 argued that epistemic standards for judging the sufficiency of scientific evidence vary in light of ethical, political, and practical values. The motivating argument is that the variation of epistemic standards across different scientific contexts cannot be explained without appeal to non-epistemic values and goals. When there are significant risks associated with error and few potential benefits in success, epistemic standards are kept high in order to prevent harmful errors. When risks are low but potential rewards high, epistemic standards can be relaxed in order to maximize the chances of realizing rewards. Judging the adequacy of evidential support on this account of scientific justification involves “thinking about the ways in which acceptance or rejection of the hypothesis under scrutiny would affect the advance of science or lives of people” (Kitcher 2011a, 32).

Philosophers that adopt this account of value-laden science are often concerned with scientific examples of high risk and correspondingly high evidential standards (Douglas 2000;

Rudner1953). Less scrutinized are cases where low risks and high rewards result in comparatively weak standards. One plausible reason is that while raising epistemic standards subjects scientific claims to more rigorous scrutiny, allowing only highly justified claims to be accepted, lowering epistemic expectations justifies the acceptance of weakly supported claims, a dangerous proposal for science. Believing on the basis of usefulness is epistemically risky business. It allows scientists to accept claims that are less likely to be true. As chapter 2 argued, however, values alone never provide sufficient reason for accepting scientific claims. Some

136 evidential support is always necessary. This chapter provides a detailed account of one instance in which scientists accept low levels of epistemic justification in light of non-epistemic goals – microbial classification.

One pertinent practical consideration for science explored in chapter 3 is the availability of evidence. Though more evidence is often available in principle, there are technological, practical, and ethical limits to the lengths scientists will go to collect that evidence. In light of the practical difficulties in gathering evidence, epistemic standards might be relaxed if there is little risk in doing so. When weak evidential support is the best scientists can achieve they sometimes judge weak evidence sufficient on practical grounds. The identification of species provides one such example (Kitcher 2001). Although species are commonly defined as populations of interbreeding organisms, scientists are rarely in a position to verify the parentage or reproductive compatibility of particular plants and animals. In many cases verifying species membership with reproductive facts is practically impossible because direct evidence of parentage and reproductive disposition is extremely difficult to gather, though it does exist and may be accessible in principle.

Paleontologists rely on gross physical appearances, morphology, to identify species because that is the only reliable evidence fossils provide. Microbiologists rely on genetic evidence because it is the only readily available evidence; physical appearances do little to distinguish microbial species. Morphology and genetics are, however, imperfect indicators of species membership. What makes evidence from physical appearances scientifically significant for paleontology is its ready availability in practice, not just its somewhat reliable support for

137 classification. In principle morphology is not the best possible way to identify dinosaur species.

In practice it is. Which facts are judged epistemically sufficient for species classification depends in part on the non-epistemic constraints and goals of scientific research. Some evidence is more epistemically valuable than others, some evidence is more practically valuable than others, and scientists must balance these two demands. Unjustified science is not the only kind of bad science; epistemic standards that are impossible to meet are problematic as well. Impractical science is bad science too. It would be impossible for paleontologists, practical speaking, to rely on genetic evidence. Alhough genes may well provide stronger epistemic support for species assignments than simply observing bone structure, as paleontologists often do, genetic standards are impractical for their purposes because genetic evidence is largely unavailable.

Hugh Lacey (2005a) concedes that scientists are concerned with ethical, social, and practical constraints on inquiry but denies the epistemic significance of them. On his view such considerations are merely strategic and although scientists embedded in research programs attend to them, assessing the epistemic justification of their claims requires a value-free assessment of the evidence. Central to this chapter's argument against the value-free ideal is the observation that practicing scientists are not merely methodologically or strategically committed to the claims they endorse. Scientists claim to have scientific knowledge as well. In specific research settings paleontologists claim to know that these fossilized remains belong to a T. Rex, for example. They do not just accept it for practical purposes. Lacey's strategic standards explain why scientists accept hypotheses in practice but fail to explain why anyone is justified in believing those hypotheses. Maintaining a strict dichotomy between the value-laden standards

138 scientists use and the value-free standards of traditional epistemology undermines scientists' claims of sufficient epistemic justification; if scientists know anything about extinct species, they know it through the imperfect fossilized evidence they gather in practice. Assuming that practicing scientists largely know what they claim to know, and given that some of these knowledge claims are not strongly supported by the evidence, some explanation for the relatively lax epistemic standards they employ is needed.

Sections 4.1 and 4.2 describe the genetic standards microbiologists use to identify species as well as the ethical, practical, and epistemic difficulties they encounter. The dearth of available evidence, the practical and ethical constraints on evidence gathering, and the biological complexity of microbial evolution impose severe limits on the amount of justification available to practicing microbiologists. Despite the epistemic weakness of claims about microbial species, scientists take themselves to have knowledge of them. The classification of ancient microbes and reconstruction of their evolutionary history is the focus of Section 4.2. Like paleontologists' classification of extinct plant and animals, classification of ancient microbial species must rely on relatively weak evidence because little evidence is available in practice. Section 4.3 explains scientists' acceptance of claims about microbial species and our continued investment of intellectual and material resources into that research by appealing to practical constraints on microbial classification. When confronted with concerns about the epistemic reliability of genetic markers for microbial species identification, microbiologists themselves cite the practical utility of genetic evidence in order to justify its continued use for classification (Stackerbrandt et al. 2002). For microbial classification, scientists acknowledge that practical constraints on

139 inquiry require lowering evidential standards.

If the relatively weak standards on display in these practices are merely strategic, however, not epistemic, why continue the project of classifying microbes – why not give up, suspend judgment, and admit that we do not have knowledge about microbial species? If our methods for identifying microbial species are epistemically insufficient, why keep doing unjustified science at all? Only an appeal to the practical, ethical, and social significance of microbiological methods of classification explains why so little evidential support can justify belief.

4.1 Identifying Microbial Species

Species are often thought to be historical lineages formed by descent relations between parents and offspring (Mayr 1970). Because organisms from different species are largely unable to reproduce with one another, species lineages form relatively closed gene pools. As a result, members of the same species tend to be genetically and physiologically similar because they are unable to acquire traits from organisms outside their species. Many evolutionary factors contribute to the reproductive isolation of species taxa: Sometimes organisms do not mate simply because one party does not display the appropriate behaviors or physical appearances, other times there are genetically incompatibilities like differences in basic chromosomal structure that prevent successful interbreeding (Ereshefsky 1992). Although biologists and philosophers disagree about how best to define species, especially about how to differentiate species from higher taxa like genera and phyla, what makes a population of organisms members of a common

140 biological taxon is historical relations of descent from common ancestry. Members of the same species tend to display morphological and genetic similarities, but they are merely indicators of the shared history that is necessary for species membership (Griffiths 1999). Because historical lineages form isolated gene pools where only other members are able to acquire traits common to the species, similarity between individual organisms often indicates their shared history.

Morphology and genetics indicate species membership with more or less accuracy, but it is the history that matters.

Microbial organisms like bacteria are particularly difficult species to identify. While paleontologists rely on morphology to identify extinct plants and animals, there is no robust fossil record of microorganisms. Even if there were, morphology does not identify microbial species as reliably as it does sexually reproducing species like dinosaurs (Doolittle 2010, 457).

Morphology is not a significant source of evidence for the classification of extinct microbial species both because morphological evidence is not readily available to microbiologists and because it is less reliable. Just as paleontologists are unable to rely on genetic evidence from extinct animals because it is in short supply, microbiologists are unable to rely on fossils in part because very few have survived.

The earliest definitions of microbial species identified them with the diseases they carry or cause, though some species do contain both harmful and non-pathogenic organisms (Lan and

Reeves 2001, 419). Morphological criteria provided more principled and systematic classificatory practices but were abandoned in light of emerging methods of genetic analysis

(Doolittle 2010, 456; Suárez-Díaz and Anaya-Muñoz 2008, 465). Microbiologists identify

141 species taxa by analyzing genes and genomes. Prior to the advent of genetic science microbial species were poorly understood, only genetic markers provided a reliable basis for species classification. Genetic evidence of ancient microbial taxa is in limited supply and difficult to analyze, however, because extinct microbes have not left any genetic evidence behind. Instead, scientists must use the genetic composition of their contemporary descendants in order to infer facts about ancient microbial species. Genetics provides the best method of classifying living microbes, though other methods are available. But for scientists interested in the evolutionary history of microbial species, the only accessible evidence is the genetic information in contemporary genomes.

Contemporary methods for identifying both living and extinct microbes rely on different genetic information. DNA-DNA hybridization techniques compare genomes in order to measure the degree of genetic similarity between populations. Individual genomes are identified by highly conserved genes, sometimes called housekeeping or core genes, which may include different segments of rDNA or rRNA (Ereshefsky 2010, 556-557; Stackerbrandt et al. 2002). None of the genetic sequences used identify microbial taxa perfectly. Although they are treated as definitive for particular research methodologies, in principle an organism could lose any of those genes and still qualify as a member of their species (Franklin 2007, 88).

Some of the epistemic challenges posed by microbial classification come from the complexity of the biological world. DNA-DNA hybridization classifies two populations as the same species just in case they exhibit at least 70% similarity. Despite the conventional standard of 70% similarity across the board, the amount of genetic similarity within species varies from

142 taxon to taxon. Humans are more genetically similar to birds and reptiles than some E. coli. bacteria are to each other (Franklin 2007, 89). E. coli. bacteria only exhibit approximately 40% genetic identity but are nonetheless classified together (Lawrence and Retchless 2010, 575).

Although 70% genetic similarity does tend to coincide with phenotypic similarity in many microbes, there is no principled biological reason for choosing exactly 70% as the threshold of sufficient of genetic similarity (O'Malley and Dupré 2007, 176; Lan and Reeves 2001, 422).

Greater than 70% similarity provides a useful general guideline for identifying members of a common species but there is no amount of similarity that can serve as a universal standard.

However, because the mechanisms of genetic inheritance produce species with different levels of genetic similarity, no single standard of species identification can be universally implemented.

Microbial species are too varied to be captured by a universal genetic criterion of membership.

Not only do different species exhibit different amounts of genetic similarity, results obtained from DNA-DNA hybridization sometimes conflict with the taxonomies produced by the analysis of core genes, and attention to different types of core genes can produce different conclusions as well (Doolittle and Bapteste 2007; Franklin 2007).

Other obstacles stem from our own practical constraints rather than a lack of evidence or nature's inherent complexity. Limits on our technological abilities provide one such practical constraint on species identification. Analyzing microbial species requires a good deal of statistical computation, for instance. While increasingly complex permutations of genetic analysis provides more insight into microbial taxa, the statistical methods require so much computational work that thorough genetic analysis was not even possible until the advent of

143 modern computers (Suárez-Díaz and Anaya-Muñoz 2008). Although the genetic evidence has been available for some time, humans' innate cognitive capacities are insufficient for understanding that evidence without technological aid. This is even more so for inferences about ancient species based on the genetic information found in living species. Because there is a vast amount of genetic information encoded in living microbial species and the number of calculations needed to infer species membership is exceedingly high, historical reconstructions of descent require information storage and computing power available only through modern technology (ibid., 464; Bapteste and Boucher 2009, 69-70).

Although developments in computing power, storage capacity, and sequencing software will likely provide better means of gathering and assessing evidence in the future, in practice scientists are limited by both the historical contingencies of contemporary technological development and the hardware and software available to them at their particular research facilities. Many of the constraints on our ability to produce highly justified inferences about microbial taxa are practical, material, and intellectual constraints that in principle can be overcome.

Microbiologists know that genetic analysis is a flawed indicator of species membership.

Despite the uncertain support that genetic evidence provides, and the difficulty of establishing principles for analyzing it, microbiologists nonetheless endorse the epistemic sufficiency of genetic evidence in identifying both historical and contemporary species (Stackerbrandt et al.

2002). Philosophers must explain why epistemic standards can be relaxed to accommodate the dearth of evidence for microbial species assignments. Goal-oriented epistemology allows such

144 flexibility if the goals of research are served without undue risk of violating our moral and practical values. A value-free account of scientific justification must explain the variation of epistemic standards without appeal to moral or practical values.

Epistemic standards might be lowered simply because the available evidence is limited and what little evidence exists is sometimes conflicted or difficult to analyze. These are often practical problems, however, because new technology and methods of analysis may bring to light previously undiscovered or unrecognized kinds of evidence and provide better ways of understanding the evidence scientists already have. Technological and methodological advances will in all likelihood provide stronger evidence for species membership in the future. Lowering epistemic standards to accommodate practical constraints like technological limitations subjects epistemic standards to practical values. In principle, scientists could always spend more time and money collecting more evidence and developing new computing technology to analyze it. Only our obligation to other non-epistemic goals explains why we do not spend all of our resources on scientific research.

Evidence often goes unexamined or misunderstood not because scientists could never access or analyze it, but because doing so is requires advanced technology, too many resources, or the violation of ethical principles. It would be unethical, for instance, to destroy endangered ecosystems or harm human research subjects in order to gain a little information about the microbial species therein. Scientists are unable, in practice, to gather all of the evidence that is available in principle. Because we have other non-epistemic goals, society cannot pursue every avenue of investigation or expend every possible resource on scientific inquiry alone. As a result,

145 the availability of evidence is strongly constrained by non-epistemic values; the limited availability evidence does not provide a value-free explanation for the weakness of evidential standards for microbial classification.

In what follows, I argue that the microbiological standards of species identification are too lax to be explained by traditional conceptions of scientific justification. Only the moral and practical consequences of microbial classification can explain why the relatively weak standards microbiologists adopt can sufficiently justify their species assignments. Section 3 focuses on the difficulties microbiologists encounter when investigating ancient species, the weakness of the available evidence, and correspondingly low epistemic standards they adopt. Section 4 then explains the epistemic adequacy of that evidence in terms of the non-epistemic goals of the research. Because there are few moral or practical risks associated with wrongly classifying ancient microbial species, I argue, epistemic standards can be relaxed to accommodate microbiologists' classificatory practices.

4.2 Microbial Species and Lateral Gene Transfer (LGT)

All of the genetic methods available for identifying microbial species are made problematic by the relatively frequent transmission of genes between different prokaryotic species through what is called lateral gene transfer (LGT). Biologists have generally assumed that all biological history can be represented as a branching tree-like representation where each branch represents a taxonomic lineage, the earliest life forms form roots, and the smallest outer branches represent contemporary species (Rieppel 2010; Bapteste and Burian 2010; Doolittle

146 and Bapteste 2007). The tree of life is supposed to be a graphic representation of evolutionary history with all organisms connected by vertical lines of descent so that each and every organism can be shown to have received its genes from ancestral organisms. Unlike sexually reproducing species, however, where genes are acquired nearly exclusively through descent from parent to offspring, prokaryotes acquire genes from organisms other than their parents. Microbes sometimes inherit and pass on genes not through vertical descent relations but from lateral gene transfers across species boundaries.

Some gene carriers like plasmids and phages act as mobile genetic elements, transporting genes laterally from one kind of organism to another through a process called transduction

(Bapteste and Burian 2010, 714). Strands of DNA can be exchanged directly through either conjugation, where cytoplasmic bridges between organisms enable LGT, or without such structures through transformation (Lawrence and Retchless 2010, 571). LGT enables small segments of one species' genome to enter and be reproduced in another, sometimes between organisms as distantly related as bacteria, plants, and fungi (Gogarten, Doolittle, and Lawrence

2002, 2227). Furthermore, since third parties sometimes carry genes from one organism to another, “bacteria can receive genes from donors that lived on the other side of the planet decades or centuries earlier” (Lawrence and Retchless 2010, 572). Microbial species are not isolated gene pools the way sexually reproducing species are assumed to be.1

Because sexual reproduction occurs almost exclusively between members of the same species, the presence of some gene in a sexually reproducing organism makes it likely that the

1 Though there have been questions concerning possible bacteria to vertebrate gene transfers (Genereux and Logsdon 2003).

147 gene was present in ancestral populations as well – baring novel mutation, some parent had to pass the gene on. Not so with prokaryotes. Whereas whole genomes are passed on from parents to offspring in sexual genetic exchanges, prokaryotes acquire different genes from different sources, sometimes distantly related sources, so that individual organisms are amalgamations of genes from many different species inherited through both vertical and lateral gene transfers

(Andam, Williams, and Gogarten 2010, 595-598; Ereshefsky 2010, 555).

The problem for identifying microbial species is that genetic analysis is largely unable to distinguish vertical from lateral gene transfers. The presence of some gene in a sexually reproducing organism reliably indicates the vertical transmission of that gene from a parent of the same species. For any gene in a prokaryotic organism there are many possible historical sources, the genes identified may have come from within the species or from any number of different species. In part due to the familiar practices associated with reconstructing the evolutionary history of reproductively isolated populations, biologists often assume that vertical patterns of inheritance are primary even in microbial taxa, where LGT between species is common (Velasco and Sober 2010). “Why few of us thought that LGT would interfere seriously with universal tree construction is an interesting question for the historian and sociologist”

(Doolittle 2010, 458).

Faith in the vertical inheritance model persisted despite early observations that LGT might undermine attempts to reconstruct a tree-like history of life. An early proponent of genetic analysis for species identification thus worried that if LGT were widespread enough, “a bacterium would not actually have a history in its own right; it would be an evolutionary

148 chimera, a collection of genes (or gene clusters), each with its own history” (Woese 1987, 230).

The effect of these chimeras is that scientists are largely unable to discover whether a particular genetic component was inherited vertically, indicating a gene common to the species, or through

LGT from another species altogether (Andam et al. 2010, 592). Scientists must decide whether to posit vertical or horizontal patterns of inheritance when either is possible, and both possibilities are equally compatible with the evidence (Lawrence and Hendrickson 2003, 7).

Although biologists have traditionally assumed that all genetic exchanges are vertical, failing evidence to the contrary, the history of a prokaryotic species is a vastly more complex network of vertical and lateral inheritance patterns than current reconstructions of the historical tree of life indicate (Velasco 2012; Rieppel 2010).2

Because LGT enables genes to cross species boundaries, the more common LGT events are the more problematic inferences from genetic markers to species membership becomes.

Some genes are more likely to be laterally transferred than others, however. One technique for overcoming the problems posed by LGT is to focus on conservative genes, genetic sequences that are less likely to be transferred laterally. Housekeeping genes are thought to be conservative because they are able to recombine with very few other species' genomes (Lan and Reeves 2001,

421). Core genes are also thought to be conservative because they are genes that all or most of the members of a species share and are therefore more likely to have been present in ancestral populations rather than acquired from outside the species (Doolittle 2010, 460).

While conservative genes are less likely to be subject to LGT, they are not immune.

2 See Haber (2012) for discussion of the trade-offs associated with assuming vertical, lateral, or mixed patterns of inheritance and Velasco and Sober (2010) in defense of vertical assumptions.

149 Biologists identify genes that encode essential metabolic functions, regulatory genes that control transcription and translation of DNA in the cells, and ribosomal RNA because they are less likely to be passed across species boundaries. All of these kinds of genes have been shown to transfer laterally, however (Gogarten, Doolittle, and Lawrence 2002, 2229-2231). Surprisingly, “their ability to be transferred lies in many of the same features originally cited as reasons why they would probably not be: they are ubiquitous in distribution, are highly conserved and perform the identical function in all cells. Yet the properties actually promote exchange of all or parts of the rRNA molecule” (Lawrence and Hendrickson 2003, 2).

Though some conservative genes are more likely to indicate vertical inheritance patterns within species, there are concerns about what microbiologists are tracking when they rely solely on core or housekeeping genes. Conservative genes typically make up less than one percent of a species genome. Given that the vast majority of genes are significantly more likely to have been received laterally, it is unclear that conservative genes reliably track the history of the species.

Tracking the history of a conservative gene tells scientists about the history of that gene, not necessarily the species it is embedded in. “If throwing out all the non-universally distributed genes and all suspected cases of LGT in our search for the tree of life leaves us with a tree of one percent, then we should probably abandon the tree as a working hypothesis” (Dagan and Martin

2006, 2).

The concern here is that the history of a small percentage of core genes does not track the history of microbial species because microbes gain and shed parts of their genome in a piecemeal fashion. While small portions of a species genome may share an evolutionary history of descent

150 from common ancestry, there is no single genetic history for entire microbial species (Doolittle and Bapteste 2006). Even if some conservative genes were immune to lateral transfer, a vertical tree of life would still be unable to represent the evolutionary history of microbial species' genomes because many, perhaps most, of their genes have been subject to LGT. The history of a small subset of a species' genes does not represent the history of the entire species.

What does the “tree of one percent” represent then? One suggestion is to abandon the tree of species populations in favor of a tree that represents the history of individual cells

(Doolittle and Bapteste 2007, 2047). While the vertical tree of species is undermined by the myriad of LGT events that make up a species' history, all cells are produced from parent cells. If cellular history is tree-like, generations of individual organisms can be represented as vertical structures rather than generations of species populations (Franklin-Hall 2010, 693). The tree of cells faces similar problems as the tree of species, however, because cells gain component genes through LGT as well. Individual cells are composed of genes with divergent histories so that, like species, cells simply do not have a single evolutionary history genetically speaking.3

Even individual genes may be composed of genetic information from different historical sources. “The segments involved in intragenic recombination usually are... much less than the length of typical genes. As a result, different regions within a single gene may have different evolutionary histories” (Gogarten et al. 2002, 2231). The authors go on to cite multiple cases of

3 Proponents of the tree of cells do suggest tracking the majority of genes rather than only core or housekeeping genes. Still, reconstructing the history of the majority of genes in an organism is not the same as tracking the whole organism, as the tree of cells suggests (Franklin-Hall 2010, 693). Because different cellular components have different evolutionary histories, “[t]he history of the ribosome cannot be equated with the organismal history, nor with the tree of cell divisions” (Andam et al. 2010, 595).

151 observed genes with laterally transferred components and divergent histories. The history of microbial life, whether represented as a history of species populations, individual organisms, or sets of genes is not entirely composed of descent relations. In the case of microbial species, evolutionary history may not even be primarily driven by vertical descent relations.

Although microbiologists recognize the problems inherent in their methods, DNA-DNA hybridization combined with conservative gene analysis still serve as the standard for microbial species assignments (Stackerbrandt et al. 2002). For the identification of contemporary species, there are concerns that the requirement of 70% similarity is not only arbitrary, because different species display different levels of genetic similarity, but flawed in principle because two highly similar organisms may have very different evolutionary histories. Genes do not track prokaryotic species as reliably as sexually reproducing species because while the latter receive genes almost exclusively from members of their own species, the former may acquire genes from vastly different organisms. Even conservative genes, those thought to be resistant to LGT mechanisms, can be transferred across species boundaries and may be made up of genetic components with divergent histories. The epistemic strength of the species assignments microbiologists make in practice are further undermined by technological constraints on information storage and computational software, as well as scientists' ability to gain access to these resources. The predominance of LGT undermines the epistemic legitimacy of contemporary methods for classifying microbial species, describing their history, and even the conceptual coherence of microbial species taxa (Ereshefsky 2010; Bapteste and Burian 2010).

Species are often assumed to be relatively closed gene pools of reproductively isolated

152 populations even though microbial species have access to other species' genes through LGT.

Deciding how much isolation is required of microbial species taxa is thus problematic because no gene pool is entirely closed, no population is perfectly isolated, and there seems no principled way to determine what degree of isolation is sufficient for species boundaries. Requiring high levels of isolation might lump all microbes together as one species because no microbe is immune to LGT, they are all capable of sharing genes in principle (Franklin 2007, 77-78). A more lax definition of species might divide the living world into an unmanageable number of taxa differentiated only by their limited contact with other organisms. Bacteria in France cannot, for the most part, receive genes from bacteria in Austrailia simply because they never come in contact. They are somewhat reproductively isolated from one another for geographical reasons.

Microbial species categories should be broad enough to recognize lineages isolated by geography alone, however. Because many small groups of organisms are weakly reproductively isolated, relaxing species definitions to accommodate LGT might divide the living world into too many fine-grained taxa, “defeating the utility of species identification as a tool to predict the general properties of organisms one may encounter” (Lawrence and Retchless 2010, 575). Assigning prokaryotic organisms to species taxa is not only difficult in practice, the theoretical consequences of LGT challenge traditional biological assumptions about what species taxa are. If microbial species are not isolated gene pools, the very idea of microbial species is “almost mythological” (Lawrence and Retchless 2010, 585).

153 4.3 Explaining the Sufficiency of Genetic Evidence for Classification

Why do microbiologists continue to engage in these classificatory practices if they are epistemically, practically, and conceptually problematic? One reason is that genetic markers

“constitute the best, perhaps the only, source of characters available in sufficient numbers to allow comparative analysis pertaining to the evolutionary history of prokaryotes” (Bapteste and

Burian 2010, 725). Being the best of many bad options is not alone good reason to adopt a flawed methodology, however, if the best possible inference is a weak one. Why continue to engage in the project at all if the best we can achieve is very weak justification? Why not abandon the whole project as either fundamentally flawed or at least unachievable in practice?

There can be no doubt that we have a legitimate interest in knowing about different kinds of microbial organisms and the features they exhibit. Various species of microbes are essential for understanding and controlling food safety, agricultural practices, mineralogy and mining, disease, environmental conservation, and bio-terrorism (Lawrence and Retchless 2010, 570).

Microbes are responsible for maintenance of the atmosphere, mineral formation, digestion, causing illness, resistance to illness, and the increasing anti-biotic resistance of some pathogens

(O'Malley and Dupre 157; Andam et al. 591). Knowing which kinds of microbes are helpful and harmful in these contexts is extremely valuable, and one justification for continuing to differentiate between microbial species is the value of such classifications, even if flawed. Given our overwhelming interest in microbial kinds, “species taxa boundaries must somehow be delimited” (Franklin 2007, 79).

There are risks associated with making poorly justified species inferences. Due to the

154 widespread application of microbial species categories, misidentifying microbes may result in flawed medical diagnoses, misunderstandings of geological processes, or misidentification of biological weaponry. The rewards of classifying microbes into discreet species taxa greatly exceeds the risks of misidentification, however, because refusing to recognize microbial species at all would undermine scientists' ability to deploy species concepts in scientific contexts.

Misidentifying microbes occasionally is far more practical than never identifying them in the first place. Because so many scientific practices depend on recognizing species categories, the rewards of employing a flawed system of classification outstrip the risks.

Charting the ancient evolutionary history of microbial species has relatively few practical repercussions, however. The value of these speculative inferences lies in their potential indirect value. Cloning Dolly the sheep served little purpose directly, but improved our ability to do useful research in the future (Kitcher 2001, 78-80). Similarly, understanding the history of microbial species and how they have changed may shed light on their contemporary descendants and how they might be manipulated to our advantage. Developing the technology and computational tools required for such research may also furnish us with genetic techniques that can be applied to non-microbial species. So long as the likelihood of possible rewards outweighs the costs – both potential risks of harm in application and the actual costs of the research itself – the classificatory practices can be justified in both the practical and epistemic senses.

There is a tension between the weak epistemic justification of identifying microbial species using genetic methods on the one hand, and accepting them merely for practical purposes on the other (Lawrence and Retchless 2010, 585). Why think that the methodological

155 commitments of practicing scientists are good enough not just for practical application outside the laboratory, but for scientific purposes as well? Why continue to insist that DNA-DNA hybridization techniques combined with conservative gene analysis sufficiently justifies knowledge claims about microbial species in purely scientific contexts? On the traditional value- free view, the practical benefits of a theory can play no role in answering this question. There is a mystery here about how claims about species in microbiology could ever be judged sufficiently justified, why scientists would continue to profess knowledge about them, and why the scientific community continues to engage in these epistemically suspect practices.

In just this vein microbiologists challenged current classificatory methods, establishing an ad hoc committee to assess the legitimacy of bacterial species definitions and look into possible alternative methods of identification. Acknowledging the epistemic concerns and encouraging further research into new methods, the committee nonetheless affirmed that 70% similarity in

DNA-DNA hybridization should continue to serve as the standard by which all other methods are evaluated (Stackerbrandt et al. 2002). Their reasoning is telling:

The committee has come to the conclusion that despite certain drawbacks with

respect to the reproducibility, workability, and rigid application of DNA-DNA

hybridization values for species delineation, the present system is sound. The

current species definition is pragmatic, operational and universally applicable,

and serves the community well. (Ibid., 1044)

156 Microbiologists defend their continued belief that genetic similarity is sufficient for species membership by pointing not to supporting evidence, which is in short supply, but its value in purely scientific applications. Genetic species criteria are not universally applicable in the sense that they accurately identify species in all cases; they simply can be used by all microbiologists. Although many different methodologies are employed for species identification, the classifications they produce can, in principle, be compared to the classifications produced by standard hybridization techniques.

Universality in this sense is useful for coordinating practices in a diffuse scientific community spread around the world because it ensures that idiosyncratic standards and taxonomies are not employed by different researchers in different locations, but it does not ensure accuracy (Suárez-Díaz and Anaya-Muñoz 2008, 463-464). There are practical reasons for requiring universality and operationality. Shared criteria of evaluation are necessary for setting standard practices and resolving disputes. When one microbiologist claims that some organism belongs to a specific species, her peers have an easy way to decide if she is right: test for 70% genetic similarity between that organisms and a known member of the supposed species. Even the most highly problematic standards can be operationalized and universally adopted, however.

Nothing about the operationality or universality of scientific standards guarantees their epistemic value. These are practical reasons for adhering to the conventional standards of microbial species identification.

The genetic criteria of species membership employed by microbiologists provide practical standards of evaluation, not necessarily accurate classifications. Practicality is

157 important for scientific standards, however. Some methods may be superior in principle but flawed in practice. Microbiologists might assess not just genetic similarity, for instance, but overall similarity in morphology and ecological relations as well as genetic composition. Such an overall similarity assessment might identify microbial species more accurately by taking into account every possible feature that tracks species membership. There are, however, simply too many similarities and differences between organisms to keep track of each and every one. In order to make similarity analysis operational, some limited number of features will have to be selected for comparison (Ereshefsky 2001; Hull 1970). Impractical methods, no matter how accurate, are of no use to scientists simply because they cannot be applied in scientific contexts; impractical epistemic standards, no matter how principled, are of not use to scientists because the evidence we have does not live up to them.

Even in purely scientific research contexts, where scientists have no goals other than obtaining knowledge about the phenomena in question, practical evaluation of epistemic standards is necessary. What counts as sufficient evidence for microbial species membership, or any other scientific claim, depends not just on the epistemic strength of the evidence, but on the value of those claims for society at large as well as scientists' ability to collect and evaluate that evidence in practice. Scientists are not justified by evidence that merely exists; the only justification scientists have in support of their beliefs comes from evidence that can be collected in the process of inquiry. Although the evidence is sometimes scant or weak, the practical necessity of positing microbial species in both scientific and non-scientific contexts, along with the evidence, justifies those posits.

158 DNA-DNA hybridization and conservative gene analysis are microbiologists best way of identifying species taxa, not just in the sense that it is the most accurate, but because they are the most accurate means consistent with the practical demands of modern science. Given scientists' limited access to strong evidence for species membership in microbial taxa, limited ability to analyze the massive amounts of genetic data available in contemporary species, and the necessity of universal, operational, and practically applicable standards, genetic analysis provides the best evidence available for microbial classification, weak though it is.

4.4 Conclusion

If scientists are sufficiently justified in making the classifications they do, in assigning species to individual organisms or constructing historical models of their evolutionary history, the strength of the available evidence alone is underwhelming. Some explanation for the relatively lax epistemic standards of microbiological classification is in order. Scientists readily explain their confidence in genetic methodologies by appeal to their pragmatic value in scientific application, including applications where the goal is to discover the truth about different kinds of microbes (Velasco 2012; Ereshefsky 2010; Franklin-Hall 2010). Believing that genetic analysis is sufficient for species identification is useful both in practical contexts when doctors, farmers, and environmental conservationists wish to identify useful and harmful microbes, and in scientific contexts, when researching prokaryotic history or identifying microbes with particular behaviors or traits.

Scientists cite the practical or operational value of theories about microbial species

159 identification as epistemic reasons for believing in them. The practical value of a theory may not indicate its truth – values do not act as evidence – but their value does justify lowering evidential standards in light of the practical impossibility of gathering more reliable evidence. The value of knowledge about microbial species is high enough and the available evidence limited enough that epistemic standards must be lowered if any knowledge is to be had. Scientists do not know which species they have identified correctly and incorrectly. They only know that many current taxonomies are flawed due to the prevalence of LGT. If microbiologists can be said to have knowledge about microbial species at all, however, they must be sufficiently justified in believing the classifications they make.

Finally, philosophers cannot isolate the influence of moral and practical constraints on microbiologists' classificatory practices by relegating their acceptance of genetic criteria to a merely practical sphere of reasoning. To do so would undermine the epistemic credibility of the classifications produced, rendering species identification useful but unjustified in the epistemic sense. The more likely it is that hybridization techniques and conservative genetic markers misidentify microbial species, the less justified conclusions drawn from the genetic evidence are.

Faulty methodological assumptions impugn the reliability of those methods. Confidence in our microbial classificatory systems, particularly the historical evolution of ancient microbial species, crucially relies on the epistemic justification of underlying claims about whether, and which, genetic properties can accurately identify species membership (Haber 2012). If microbiologists merely accept genetic criteria for practical or strategic reasons, their classifications are not epistemically justified.

160 Only the practical value of species classifications can explain why scientists are sufficiently justified despite their high levels of uncertainty. Microbiologists' appeal to the practical value of genetic methods for species identification demonstrates the influence of practical values on epistemic assessments of scientific claims. When weak evidential support is the best scientists can achieve in practice but there are practical scientific benefits of acceptance, scientists judge weakly supported claims sufficiently justified.

161 Chapter 5: Pluralism, Objectivity, and Values

Opposition to values in science often stems from concerns about objectivity (Haack 1998;

Koertge 2000; Pinnick 2003). Objective theories, on the traditional view, are those that accurately represent the objects of inquiry. According to these authors, values do not contribute to objectivity because they do not provide information about how reality is; they are beliefs about how reality ought to be. Nothing about the value of a hypothesis makes it more likely to be true, they reason, so using values to justify theories could only distract scientists from what really ensures objectivity – evidence. There are important questions about the metaphysics of epistemic holism: Why should values, beliefs about how the world ought to be, influence beliefs about how reality actual is? Does commitment to holism require abandoning mind-independent realism, according to which nature exists independent of our beliefs and desires about it? I argue that epistemic holism is consistent with both realism and a somewhat traditional conception of objectivity.

The traditional view casts facts and values as beliefs “occupying sharply demarcated spheres, with factual judgments on one side, value judgments... on the other, each isolated from logical or evidentiary connection with the other” (Anderson 2004, 22). Holists argue that factual claims about reality and evaluative claims about what is right or good interact: values play a role in determining what should be believed about the empirical world and facts play a role in determining what should be valued (Anderson 1995; Clough 2004; Kitcher 2011a). Factual and evaluative claims, rather than belonging to separate spheres of reasoning, form a holistic web of

162 interacting beliefs. Accordingly, holists have tried to recast objectivity as having at least two components, one concerned with accuracy and fidelity to nature, the other concerned with a theory's value for achieving non-epistemic aims (Douglas 2004; Kitcher 2001; Anderson 1995).

The challenge is to accommodate a role for values in scientific theorizing while recognizing that values do not provide evidential reasons for believing the world is one way or another.

On the view developed in previous chapters, although only evidence can provide information about nature's objects, values help determine when a belief is sufficiently justified by the evidence. This chapter attempts to reconcile holism with traditional notions of objectivity by distinguishing epistemic holism from some of the metaphysical claims holists have used to motivate it. The dispute between traditionalists and holists is often taken to pit realism against constructivism, for instance (Kitcher 2001a; Daston and Galison 2007; Giere 1999; Longino

2002a). Realism claims that reality is independent of human belief. Constructivism maintains that our beliefs about the world require creation and invention. They cannot be arrived at by mere observation of nature's structure. Holist proponents of constructivism argue that values' influence on theorizing demonstrates one sense in which scientific understanding of reality is dependent upon human thinking, not just nature's inherent structure. Constructivism challenges the metaphysics of traditionalism. I argue values can influence the construction of scientific theories while respecting the mind-independence of nature.

Another closely related issue is pluralism. Holists sometimes attempt to demonstrate values' influence on beliefs about reality by showing how different values lead to the acceptance of different scientific theories. Cases of pluralism are supposed to demonstrate how reality can be

163 constructed or conceptualized in different ways depending on the values adopted. Some holists promote ontological pluralism, arguing that values can make different theories true (Putnam

1981). Other holists adopt theoretical pluralism, arguing that values decided between multiple theories that are true independent of their value (Kitcher 2001; Giere 1999). I attempt to disentangle the interrelated issues of objectivity, realism, pluralism, and values in science in order to argue that epistemic holism can be motivated without appealing to controversial metaphysical claims. The goal is to show that accepting an epistemic role for values in science does not require commitment to a mind-dependent reality or pluralism. I do not try to show that ontological or theoretical pluralism is false; the point is to show that they are unnecessary for goal-oriented epistemology. Epistemic holism, I argue, is consistent with traditional commitments to objectivity, realism, and monism.

Competing conceptions of objectivity are often tied to different metaphors of theory development. On the traditional view, objectivity requires scientists to passively observe and record nature accurately; nature must be allowed to determine the content of theories. The decisions and judgments scientists make should be minimized so that scientific theorizing defers to reality's inherent structure. Plato's metaphor for the traditional view of objectivity embodies deference to reality by calling for scientific theories to carve nature at the joints (Phaedrus 265e).

Just as chefs carve poultry into naturally occurring pieces like legs and wings rather than hacking away wherever they like, scientific theories should carve the world into natural pieces – at the joints.

Holists offer alternative metaphors for objectivity in order to demonstrate the

164 compatibility of value judgments in science with the desire to represent nature accurately (Giere

1999; Kitcher 2001; Putnam 1981). These metaphors invoke pluralism as a motivation to value- laden objectivity but their authors present different kinds of pluralism. Hilary Putnam (1981) argues that the content of theories is determined by reality's inherent structure while the form of knowledge is shaped by values. The world can be accurately carved into many forms, he argues, so that which form scientific theories take depends on the values one adopts. Central to Putnam's argument is the metaphor of theories as cookie-cutters that carve reality into many different but equally legitimate objects. On this metaphor, reality can be conceptualized many different ways and different concepts carve reality into different objects, just as one piece of dough can be carved into many different shapes. Section 5.2 argues that Putnam's metaphysical pluralism is problematic for two reasons. First, reality is supposed to determine a theory's content while human decisions determine its form, but Putnam's distinction between theoretical content and form is unclear and, as he admits, unhelpful. The metaphor turns on a disanalogy between cookies and scientific theories: theories, unlike cookies, do not obviously have both content and form.

Second, there is a conceptual inconsistency in holding that nature's objects could exist in multiple inconsistent states at once (Haack 1998, 155-160). For Putnam, a person with one set of values can have a true belief that contradicts the true belief of another person with different values. The structure of reality, by implication, is both mind-dependent and self-contradictory.

While I do not provide a comprehensive argument to show that reality could not be mind- dependent, I believe Putnam's metaphysics is unnecessarily controversial. If metaphysical

165 pluralism can only motivate epistemic holism by abandoning the belief that nature has a mind- independent structure to discover, one that is the same for all investigators, holists should look for another motivation.

Kitcher (2001) invokes many of the same arguments as Putnam while endorsing a different metaphor for objectivity. His view does not imply that nature could exist in two inconsistent states at once and retains commitment to mind-independent realism. For Kitcher, different theories of the same phenomena need not describe different overlapping objects– they may describe different aspects of the same object. Because the world is populated by objects consisting of many scientifically interesting features, different theories of the same phenomena can emphasize different features of that phenomena. Real objects do not exist in multiple inconsistent states, Kitcher argues, but there are several consistent theories that accurately describe the same object. Analogously, two maps of the same city can appear radically different if they chart different structures. A map of New York's electrical grid will not closely resemble an elevation map of the city even if they chart the exact same region. Just as a map may represent different features of the same terrain, different theories of the same phenomena can represent different structures (Giere 1999). The map-making metaphor accommodates values in scientific theorizing by pointing out that scientific theories must ignore some aspects of a phenomena while representing the relevant aspects of nature accurately. Values decide which entities a theory should represent, but the objects represented are mind-independent.

While the map-making metaphor is useful for understanding how values can influence scientific reasoning without undermining traditional commitments to realism and objectivity, I

166 argue that theoretical pluralism is neither necessary nor sufficient for motivating an epistemic role for values. Chapter 2 (Section 2.1) suggested that Kitcher's epistemology requires only epistemic pluralism, not theoretical pluralism. What motivates goal-oriented epistemology is the acceptance of different evidential standards, not different theories. Section 5.4 of this chapter develops that view, arguing that attention to different kinds of evidence, rather than the acceptance of different theories, is analogous to mapping different structures. Scientists can use different bodies of evidence without accepting different theories. The point of the argument is, once again, not to show that pluralists are wrong to claim that reality can be represented many different ways, but to show how theoretical pluralism can be divorced from Kitcher's goal- oriented epistemology. One need not be a theoretical pluralist to adopt epistemic holism.

Even if many theories of the same phenomena are available, theoretical pluralism does not explain why values should determine which theory is more justified. If two theories are equally true, both can be equally justified as well. Because different theories might be more or less useful for different applications without being more or less justified in the epistemic sense, choosing between two theories of the same phenomena may be a purely practical matter. Holists must not only show that values influence theory choices, values must influence theoretical justification in order to take on epistemic significance. Epistemic pluralism motivates epistemic holism; theoretical pluralism does not.

The map-making analogy does, however, offer a view of objectivity that incorporates value judgments into scientific theorizing without undermining the traditional requirement of fidelity to nature's structure. To reformulate Kitcher's and Giere's observations about maps into

167 the language of Plato's carving metaphor, science does not attempt to carve nature at every joint.

Some facts are insignificant for scientific purposes. Some facts are interesting to one field of study but not another. Scientists embedded in specific research contexts must decide which joints are worth recognizing. While objective theories should represent nature accurately, values help determine which facts are worth representing, which of nature's joints should be carved. I conclude this chapter by applying Plato's metaphor to a value-laden conception of justification and objectivity. Previous chapters have argued that values shape scientific reasoning by indicating not only which facts are worthy of investigation but when the facts sufficiently justify belief in some theory. Values contribute to judgments about when we have succeeded in carving nature at the joints, not just which facts to recognize.

The traditional view of objectivity is, I think, overly simplistic but not misguided.

Scientists should aim at discovering nature's mind-independent structure, but doing so requires decisions about what to investigate and what counts as sufficient justification. To develop Plato's metaphor, butchers must labor to serve up the finest cuts; theories do not come carved up and pre-packaged for convenience. Butchers must carve in the right locations and discard the undesirable portions of an animal. Scientifically uninteresting facts are like the undesirable bits of flesh, to be cast aside and ignored. Deciding what evidence counts as sufficient is like deciding exactly where to carve. Scientists must believe only what is sufficiently justified the way butchers must carve only where they can be reasonably sure a joint exists. Because judgments must be made about which facts are significant enough for recognition and when the evidence sufficiently justifies belief, values are not only consistent with objectivity, they are

168 necessary for carving nature at the joints.

Pluralism and constructivism are often associated with epistemic holism but epistemic holism is a distinct doctrine with distinct implications. As a result, traditionalists cannot undermine epistemic holism by criticizing the metaphysical claims holists' frequently adopt.

Epistemic holism does not require commitment to constructivism, theoretical pluralism, or ontological pluralism.

5.1 Constructivism and Realism

On the traditional view, objectivity is about representing the world as its objects exist in nature independent of human decisions and desires. Plato's metaphor for this image of objectivity requires carving nature at the joints. According to this metaphor the world has an inherent structure, like animals have inherent parts neatly delineated by joints. The inquirer's task is to develop theories that accurately represent reality's structure just as a butcher's job is to carve animals neatly at the joints. When a theory accurately represents reality, it is objective. Carving nature at the joints requires a passive or deferential attitude so that nature, rather than subjective opinion, determines the content of scientific theories. Plato's metaphor captures the intuition that scientific theories are genuine discoveries of fact, not mere invention or opinion (Slater and

Borghini 2011, 2).

The traditional view pits objectivity against subjectivity, deference against intervention, discovery against invention (Daston and Galison 2007, 191-210). Values, beliefs about how the

169 world ought to be, are traditionally taken to be subjective opinions and therefore opposed to objectivity. If epistemic justification is only concerned with forming beliefs that are likely to be true representations of the world, values do not contribute to epistemic justification because one cannot conclude anything about how reality is from beliefs about how reality ought to be (Haack

1998, 129; Sober 2007). Devotion to a traditional account of scientific objectivity therefore requires an analysis of evidential support independent of moral or political values (Koertge 2000;

Pinnick 2003).

Holists' contention that values have a genuinely epistemic role to play in the justification of scientific theories has led traditionalists to suspect they are not sufficiently concerned with mind-independent reality. And with good reason, many holists adopt some form of constructivism according to which reality is actually dependent upon scientific theorizing

(Daston and Galison 2007; Longino 2002; Kuhn 1962). It is uncontroversial that scientific theories are constructed. They are the product of creative processes in the minds scientists.

Scientific theories take time and energy to produce; they are crafted and refined. Although the world may have an objective structure waiting to be discovered, theoretical representations of that structure are not lying in wait, they must be invented (Hacking 1999, 9-16). Constructivists go further, claiming that objects, not just theories, are constructed.

Daston and Galison contend that objects are dependent on human construction, not merely in the world, and yet they defend some sort of minimal realism as well (2007, 361). They take discussion of mind-independent reality to be fruitless – by 'object' they mean a theoretical construction, what they call the working objects of science, not mind-independent objects.

170 Longino similarly defends constructivism and endorses a minimal realism: there is something out there independent of our conceptual practices, but more than that she dare not say (Longino

2002a, 119-121). Because observation is always informed by learned preconceptions about what is observed, there is no use in speaking of reality independent of what we know about it.

Scientists do not passively observe reality when gathering evidence. They must understand those observations against a background of previously accumulated knowledge. Understanding reality requires not just passive deference to nature's structure; scientists must actively apply their expertise to ascertain the truth. These holists acknowledge, sometimes grudgingly, that science investigates something mind-independent while stressing the extent to which our understanding of that reality is dependent upon background assumptions, including values.

For traditionalists, this is more grist for the mill: If value-laden science can only be defended by giving up on the idea that reality exists independent of our beliefs about it, or that we can meaningfully understand and talk about that reality, so much the worse for holism.

Traditional realism underwrites discussion of mind-independent reality even if it is poorly understood. More importantly, the truth of a theory depends on its relation to mind-independent reality; a theory is either true or false independent of what is believed about it. Holism does not require giving up mind-independent conceptions of truth and reality, however. Holists can concede that real objects are mind-independent and value-free while insisting that knowledge of those objects is constructed and value-laden. Kitcher wrestles with these competing conceptions of scientific theorizing and attempts to chart just this kind of middle path between construction and discovery. Constructing theories is not the same as constructing reality, Kitcher observes, but

171 “the ways in which we draw boundaries around pieces of nature to suit our capacities and interests sometimes lead us to modify the world as we find it” (Kitcher 2001, 52).

Constructivism about theories is not incompatible with traditional realism. There is, however, a tension between theory construction and traditional conceptions of objectivity because passive deference to nature is supposed to be the hallmark of objectivity. The challenge for holists is to explain how scientists can allow values to inform their reasoning without imposing their will on reality. If objective theories carve nature at the joints, what legitimate role do values have to play in theory construction?

5.2 Ontological Pluralism and Values

Hilary Putnam (1981; 1988; 1992) attempts to develop a constructivist notion of objectivity that exploits a middle ground between creation and discovery. Putnam's ontological pluralism holds that the world can be carved up into many different and inconsistent objective representations, each equally true despite their inconsistency (1988, 110-115; 1992, 103, 109,

120). Because different theoretical representations have different uses, depending on the goals and interests at stake in a specific context, different theories will count as true or objective descriptions of reality (Putnam 1988, 114-115).

Many of Putnam's arguments for ontological pluralism involve scientific classifications like species and chemical kinds. Like Kitcher, he points to the variety of methods and criteria scientists employ in classificatory practices. While metaphysicians often claim that gold is identified with the atomic weight of 79, jewelers and metallurgists use a variety of tests that do

172 not measure the atomic weight of samples (ibid., 23). Gold can be delineated by many different features and identified with different methods just as different methods of species identification produce conflicting classifications. Central to Putnam's ontological pluralism is the claim that competing theories make incompatible claims about the object of inquiry. Theories of gold identify gold's defining features, they say what gold is, but competing theories disagree about the nature of gold. They are incompatible with one another. Not only are there many conflicting epistemic methods for identifying samples of gold and many equally legitimate theories about what gold is, there are many real overlapping entities that answer to the name 'gold'.

Putnam offers a cookie-cutter metaphor as an alternative to the joint carving metaphor for theory construction. Reality is depicted as a pan of uniform cookie dough without structure or joints to be deferred to. Because there is no uniquely true description of reality, where theories carve nature depends on our practices rather than reality's inherent structure. “The things independent of all conceptual choices are the dough; our conceptual contribution is the shape of the cookie-cutter” (ibid., 113). On this metaphor the content of theories, the dough, is mind- independent while the form of those theories, the shape of the cookie-cutter, depends on which divisions are useful in a given context. Even granting the requirement of conformity to mind- independent reality, Putnam claims, what counts as a true or objective theory changes from context to context because reality can be accurately represented in many different ways. Which of the many accurate representations counts as true or objective must be identified relative to some set of goals or values (ibid.,109, 114).

Putnam's cookie-cutter metaphor presents two problems. First, his brand of pluralism

173 posits many mutually incompatible ways to carve nature into pieces. Though several theories can be said to represent one phenomena accurately, they cannot all be true at the same time because they disagree about the nature of the object described. Which theory counts as a true depends on the goals of inquiry. As Susan Haack laments, however, either reality can be described in many different but compatible ways or the world is self-contradictory (Haack 1998, 155-160). It is simply a contradiction to assume that two incompatible descriptions of the world could both be true if what we mean by incompatible is something like “not true at the same time,” which

Putnam clearly intends.

For Putnam, gold's nature changes from context to context depending on the inquirers' goals. The world is not the same for everyone and it may exist some way at one moment, then be incompatibly different sometime later simply because the investigator has changed their mind about what they wish to accomplish. By treating values as determiners of truth, Putnam violates the basic tenants of objectivity, that science should defer to reality rather than create it, and realism, that nature has an inherent structure independent of our beliefs. His strong version of constructivism claims that reality itself is mind-dependent. This presents challenges for science:

If different scientists are studying different worlds, or one world with a different structure for different inquirers, what is the point of collective efforts to understand it? What sense is there in talking about the correct theory of a phenomena when different theories are true for different people? How could anyone ever prove that another investigator was wrong? If there is no mind- independent reality to speak of, only constructed representations, the quest for truth is quixotic.

This is where Putnam's metaphorical distinction between the form of theories, the

174 contribution of conceptual choices like goals and values to objectivity, and mind-independent content comes in. In the cookie-cutter metaphor, the dough of the world, facts, determine the content of theories while values determine the form of theories by deciding which theoretical descriptions are true. As Putnam later admits, however, the metaphor is not helpful in understanding the role of mind-independent reality in theory construction: “Take it seriously, and you are at once forced to answer the question 'What are the various parts of the dough?' ”

(Putnam 1988, 113-114). Where Plato's metaphor asserts that nature has intrinsic parts that determine the content of theories, the cookie-cutter metaphor does not posit any natural structure capable of guiding theory construction. The world, on his metaphor, is like a uniform and jointless pan of dough. Because fact and value are inextricably intertwined in theory choice,

Putnam claims, it is impossible to distinguish the conceptually dependent from the mind- independent features of scientific representations. “We cannot say, 'these and these elements of the world are raw facts, the rest is the result of convention” (ibid., 113). The metaphor is therefore unhelpful in disentangling the contribution of facts from the role of values in theory construction. While the traditional metaphor of carving nature at the joints takes seriously the idea that nature has inherent structure, the cookie-cutter metaphor assumes that reality has no joints at all. Only our conceptual choices, the form of the cookie-cutter, determines the shape of scientific theories. The metaphor simply denies that reality has any inherent structure to defer to, leaving the imposition of boundaries to subjective inquirers.

Ontological pluralism explains how values influence theory choice, by selecting between many incompatible but equally legitimate conceptions of some object, but only at the expense of

175 a logically consistent metaphysics. Nature cannot exist in two inconsistent states at once.

Moreover, Putnam's cookie-cutter metaphor is unhelpful in explicating a constructivist theory of objectivity because it offers no explanation of nature's influence on theory construction. Rather than demonstrating the compatibility of value-laden science with deference to nature's inherent structure, the cookie-cutter metaphor undermines the very idea of mind-independent structure.

Putnam's view is interestingly similar to another motivation to holism discussed in

Chapter 1. Underdetermination arguments claim there are multiple inconsistent theories supported by any body of evidence. Both arguments claim that values choose between incompatible accounts of the same phenomena. The difference is in what role values play: For underdetermination theorists, values determine what a person believes. Putnam takes the stronger stance that values determine what is true. Whereas underdetermination arguments fail to motivate an epistemic role for values because people's beliefs can be influenced by values without being justified by them (bias is one example), Putnam's argument explicitly claims that reality itself depends on human goals. Scientists are more justified in accepting a theory that conforms to their values because their values make it true. Ontological pluralism, unlike underdetermination, motivates an epistemic role for values, but only by undermining the mind- independence of reality.

5.3 Mapping a Complex World: Theoretical Pluralism and Values

Kitcher cites pluralism as a motivation to value-laden science as well, and like Putnam he appeals to the idea that nature can be carved many different ways. An individual block of marble,

176 for example, can be divided up into different constituent parts. The block can be divided into atoms that make up the block, larger molecules which overlap the individual atoms, or even larger chunks of marble made up of many molecules (Kitcher 2001, 44-45). A block of marble can be carved into many overlapping descriptions at the atomic, molecular, or macro-physical level, but the block is itself constituted by all of those parts at once.

The marble is a little piece of the world, and like the larger cosmos it

can be conceived of as divided up into objects in many different ways.

Independently of our conceptions, those objects, those chunks of marble, exist.

We draw (or chisel) the lines, but we don't bring the chunks into being. There is

thus no determinate answer to the question, “How many things are there?” and

no possibility of envisaging a complete inventory of nature. (Kitcher 2001, 45)

Putnam similarly argues that there can be no determinate answer to questions like “How many objects are there in this room?” because objects can be carved into several equally legitimate divisions (Putnam 1988, 110-111). There is, however, a significant difference between his and Kitcher's approach. Where Putnam posits a plurality of inconsistent theoretical descriptions of an object, Kitcher argues that a block of marble can be accurately described by several compatible theories. Blocks of marble are composed of both atoms and molecules at the same time; one does not preclude the other. Because both descriptions are consistent with one another, values need not make one description true and another false in a given context. Both can

177 be true all the time. As a result, Kitcher can reject Putnam's ontological pluralism with regard to objects in favor of a weaker pluralism about theories or descriptions of objects. “Different ways of dividing nature into objects will yield different representations of reality... Properly understood, however, the truths they enunciate are completely consistent” (Kitcher 2001, 47).

Values can decide which theory is appropriate for a given context without determining which theory is true.

Kitcher appeals to a metaphor developed by Ronald Giere about map-making to demonstrate the compatibility of traditional notions of objectivity with the influence of values in theory construction (Giere 1999; Kitcher 2001, Chapter 5). A map represents specific features of reality – transportation routes, elevation, climate, political borders, etc. – but a good map cannot represent everything at once lest it become too cluttered. A good transportation map does not depict elevation or climactic patterns because those aspects of nature are generally irrelevant for navigating the city. A more accurate map is not always more desirable. Representing every feature of reality is often impractical, not only because a cluttered map is difficult to decipher, but because it would be impossible to represent every detail of the terrain. Any map that represented every feature of the real world would be an exact replica of the real world (Daston and Galison 2007, 50; Kitcher 2001, 60). Only a complete physical duplication of a city could represent that city with perfect accuracy, carving nature at its joints (Franklin-Hall 2010, 697).

Copying or mirroring reality is at best unhelpful, at worst impossible.

Scientific theories, like maps, are not replicas of the phenomena they represent. They single out the interesting features of reality in order to facilitate goals. They are designed from

178 the outset to accentuate particular features of the real world, the features that allow us to predict, explain, and manipulate reality in useful ways (Anderson 1995). Of course, a good map must be accurate as well because inaccurate maps are generally less useful than accurate representations.

Serving practical interests and fidelity to nature are not incompatible goals. Often they are complimentary (Crasnow 2008; Kitcher 2001, 56).

Proponents of values in scientific theorizing have argued, independently of the map metaphor, that nature's complexity necessitates focus on particularly relevant aspects of reality.

Natural phenomena are influenced by a variety of causal forces and picking out the important causes is often a matter of disregarding less relevant forces (Cartwright 1999; Dupré 1993;

Mitchell 2009). A fluttering dollar bill falls more slowly than Newton's calculations of gravitational attraction would predict due to wind resistance, but rather than concluding that

Newton's law is simply false, Cartwright points out that in the context of theoretical physics, gravitational forces, not atmospheric conditions, are the relevant causes of falling behavior

(Cartwright 1999, 25-27). Physicists know that wind affects the fall of some objects but ignore such forces for their scientific purposes. In physics, as in other scientific domains, “the world has too many things going on simultaneously for it to resolve into single agents making things happen” (Mikuleky 2007, 2489). Because those concerned with complexity often argue that the relevance of particular causal forces largely depends on what practical uses the science is aimed at, they take nature's complexity to support holism by necessitating decisions about which causes are significant to some domain of inquiry (Cartwright 2007; Mikuleky 2007).

This conception of scientific theories as partial representations of complex phenomena

179 motivates the view that theoretical pluralism is the norm in science (Doolittle 2010, 470; Giere

1999). If theories can only be partial representations, multiple theories will be needed to represent every significant aspect of many phenomena. Importantly, the map-making metaphor does not necessitate belief in multiple inconsistent but equally real entities. Different theories represent various aspects of a single object rather than a variety of overlapping objects. It does not follow from the existence of many different maps of New York City that there are many cities of New York. There are many ways of describing the city, many features can be used to identify it, but there is only one city. Similarly, the existence of many equally legitimate scientific theories about an object does not imply the existence of many overlapping objects.

Theoretical pluralism in light of complexity is sufficient to motivate a role for values in choosing between theories without invoking pluralism about the entities themselves.

The map-making metaphor suggests the value of scientific claims figures into their objectivity because theories, like maps, are instruments for achieving certain goals. Choosing a theory for its practical convenience does not necessarily undermine a commitment to choosing accurate theories because there can be many accurate theories of one phenomena. One important property of maps is their attention to the particular structures relevant to achieving some goal, another is their accuracy in representing those features. The metaphor demonstrates the need for deference to nature's inherent structure – maps must be accurate – while accommodating a role for values in selecting which aspects of nature are to be represented. For traditionalists, objectivity is not relative to any goal. If a theory is supported by the evidence then it is probably true and therefore objective. On the more robust value-laden view of objectivity, it is not enough

180 for scientists to endorse theories that are supported by the evidence. Objective scientific practice requires using the theories that represent the relevant features of the world as well.

Theoretical justification, on this view, proceeds on two tracks: normative and

evidential. Contextual values determine what phenomena are so significant that

a theory ought to represent them when they exist. Evidence indicates when

those phenomena are instantiated. (Anderson 1995, 51)

On a holistic conception, the instrumental value of specific theories for particular applications makes those theories more justified and more robustly objective. Theories that serve human goals are not more likely to be true; they are simply better for application. Although many theories are true of a single phenomena, in specific contexts different theories will be more or less suitable for application and therefore more or less objective. Value-laden objectivity requires expanding our conception of objectivity to cover value in problem solving as well as accuracy and evidential support.

Subjecting theory choices to goals and values does not undermine the traditional goal of fidelity to nature's structure or commitment to realism, however. Inaccuracy is one way to fall short of objectivity, and failure to meet practical demands is another. The objective theories are just a subset of the many theoretical constructions that accurately represent reality. Values do not make these theoretical entities real, truth and reality are not relative to human goals, but relevance and objectivity are (Kitcher 2001, 110). It is not enough for scientists to accept theories

181 that are supported by the evidence. Objective scientific practice requires adopting theories that represent relevant features of the objects under investigation. Inaccurate science is not the only kind of bad science; impractical science is problematic as well.

Consider the complexity of biological species, the many forces that create and sustain them, and the observable features scientists use to identify them. Many biological mechanisms are involved in the production and maintenance of species taxa, including morphology, genetic composition, ecological pressures, as well as genetic exchanges through sexual reproduction, cell division, and lateral gene transfer. “Many processes Darwin never dreamed of are important in molding populations, including mutation, segregation, recombination, genetic drift, gene conversion, and meiotic drive” (Richerson and Boyd 2005, 5). Not every evolutionary force can be represented by a single theory, however. Some feature of species will have to be selected for classificatory practices.

Microbiologists rely on genetic markers to identify species because they provide the best evidence for their purposes, Kitcher points out, while physical appearances allow paleontologists and botanists to distinguish the species they study (Kitcher, 2001 48-49). Values play a role in determining which aspects of species are relevant for particular classifications. Goals and desires do not unilaterally dictate which aspects of nature are relevant in a given context. There are mind-independent facts about the ability of some features of reality to facilitate human aims. A scientist that identifies microbes using physical appearances is not practicing objective science by contemporary standards because microbiology requires attention to genetic evidence.

For Kitcher, the many available methods of species identification indicates a plurality of

182 true species theories. His theoretical pluralism avoids some of the counter-intuitive consequences of Putnam's ontological pluralism because it does not require many inconsistent theories to be true of one phenomena, nor does it portray values as truth-makers. The value of a theory does not make it true or the entity it describes real; values are supposed to merely contribute to justification and objectivity. The goals of the scientific enterprise help determine which facts about species are relevant for classification. There is no overlapping plurality of inconsistent but co-existing species. As Kitcher later realizes, however, theoretical pluralism does not motivate an epistemic role for values in science (2011a, 32).

5.4 Carving Nature's Useful Joints: Epistemic Pluralism and Values

On Kitcher's account, because theories are only able to describe a limited number of nature's many complex structures, there are often many true theories of a phenomena available. A more practical theory need not be more epistemically justified than a useless one, however. It may just be more practical. There is a distinction between practical justification for action and the epistemic justification of beliefs. Microbiologists may be more justified in using genetic theories than paleontologists without being more justified in believing them. Because the value of a theory does not increase its likelihood of truth, theoretical pluralism does not explain how values alter the epistemic status of a theory. Kitcher needs an argument to show that the epistemic status of theories varies across contexts, not just their practical applicability.

Epistemic pluralism, Chapter 3 argued, motivates an epistemic role for values in science.

Because different standards of sufficient justification are accepted in different scientific contexts,

183 philosophers must provide epistemic principles that explain why standards are allowed to vary.

The traditional value-free view of epistemic justification is unable to explain why scientists engaged in biological classification are often held to different standards. Why should microbiologists and paleontologists be allowed to rely on relatively weak evidence when identifying long extinct species? The scarcity of evidence alone does not explain their lax standards. Scientists cannot always accept the available evidence as sufficient. Goal-oriented epistemology permits epistemic standards to be lowered just in case accepting the claim in question poses no significant threat to our moral and practical values. While the value of a theory does not make it more likely to be true, deciding what counts as sufficient justification depends on the goals that theory may be used to promote or hinder. On this view, a claim is sufficiently justified by the evidence when it is reliable enough to apply in practice (Douglas 2000; Kitcher

2011a; Rudner 1953). Theoretical pluralism plays no essential role in the argument for value- laden epistemic standards. Paleontologists and microbiologists use different evidence to justify their classifications. Whether they adopt different theories is irrelevant. Scientists may use different kinds of evidence to identify species even if there is only one true theoretical description of them. The species example is compelling because epistemic standards for species identification change, not because scientists adopt different theoretical accounts of species.

Kitcher and Giere are right to point to the complexity of nature as an important aspect of the argument, however. The reason many different kinds of evidence support species classifications is the complexity of biological taxa. Genetic, morphological, ecological, and reproductive features of organisms can all be indicative of species membership because they

184 often play essential evolutionary roles in creating and maintaining similarity in the population. If genes were the only evolutionary significant feature of species, by contrast, only genetic evidence could identify them. The complexity of evolutionary mechanisms explains why many different kinds of facts can provide evidence for species membership and, in turn, why scientists can appeal to different facts to support their classifications. Species often exhibit both morphological and genetic similarity, but biologists do not need to gather all the evidence to classify an organism. They only need enough evidence to be sufficiently justified. Sometimes only one kind of evidence is available, as in the case of dinosaurs, and sometimes only one kind of evidence is needed although many kinds are accessible.

The carving metaphor can be rehabilitated to fit the holistic view of objectivity as both value-laden and concerned with the structure of mind-independent reality. The impossibility of investigating and representing every feature of the natural world is central to arguments for the map-making metaphor. The world is too complex for full fidelity to nature's structure; there are simply too many joints in nature to carve at all of them, and some joints are more useful than others. Some facts are unworthy of scientific attention because they will not further any significant goal. Scientists must choose which phenomena to investigate, which evidence to gather, and when the evidence is sufficient to conclude inquiry. The complexity of natural objects does not necessarily indicate the truth of many different theories. There are simply different bodies of evidence that can be used to justify a theory. Epistemic pluralism draws attention to the variety of epistemic standards in science rather than the variety of theories. Some contexts demand more evidential support than others, and some contexts require attention to different

185 kinds of facts that provide evidential support. Nature's complexity, on this view, supplies a bounty of evidence rather than a multitude of theories. Because nature has so many joints, one might say, the form or shape of our carvings may be influenced by values in choosing which joints to carve.

The situation is analogous to actual instances of carving: Nobody carves an animal at every joint. Butchers and chefs cut at the joints that serve up amicable portions. Real animals have too many joints to bother carving at all of them. It would serve no purpose. Analogously, insignificant facts are ignored by scientists; they carve only at the joints that matter. Carving here represents the justification of theories, not their construction. Different facts, the joints of nature, can be used to justify the same theory. Just as butchers must choose which of the many joints will partition an animal into useful pieces, scientists must decide which bodies of evidence to employ in justifying their claims. The physiological complexity of animals provides many joints for the butcher to carve at, and the complexity of the natural world furnishes investigators with many potential sources of evidence.

While Plato's metaphor provides some normative guidelines for how to construct theories, by letting nature's inherent structure guide theoretical decisions, it does not provide criteria for deciding when science has succeeded in doing so (Douglas 2004, 453-455). It is easy to demand fidelity to nature's structure, harder to decide when that structure is accurately represented. When do we know that a theory carves nature at the joints? Traditionalists are partly right in saying a theory carves nature at the joints when it is justified by the evidence. The arguments of chapter 3 were meant to establish that sufficient justification can only be spelled

186 out adequately by appealing to values. Theories can be said to carve nature at the joints when their evidential support is sufficient for the purposes they serve. To extend the metaphor, butchers cannot carve where they are not reasonably certain about the presence of a joint. They must carve where they know a joint is likely to exist.

Where science carves nature depends on values in two ways. First, what counts as a relevant feature of reality depends on the overall goals of society as well as the goals of specific research program. Some facts are uninteresting for any and all scientific contexts, and some are only significant in specific scientific contexts. Because there are many interesting aspects of species taxa, different properties of species – their genes, historical development, or physical appearances – are relevant to different scientific inquiries. Some facts about about species may not be relevant to any scientific inquiry at all. Although many different facts might justify a theory, scientific inquiry does not require attention to every epistemically supportive fact.

Scientists must decide how much and what kind of evidence is sufficient for justifying a particular claim in a particular context. Insignificant facts are like the bits of flesh a butcher throws away. They exist as possible sources of evidence, but their lack of value for scientific inquiry renders them unworthy of attention.

Values influence the epistemic standards of science by determining when the evidence sufficiently justifies belief in a theory. They inform judgments about when objectivity has been achieved. Scientists should carve nature only where they are sufficiently justified in believing a joint exists; the butcher does not get to guess about where to carve. Objectivity turns out to be more analogous to butchery than Plato envisioned: Butchers do not carve animals at every joint

187 or where they are uncertain about the existence of a joint. They carve only at the joints they know about and those that provide useful portions. Similarly, a scientific theory metaphorically carves nature at the appropriate joints when it is both useful for some relevant goal and sufficiently justified to reliably serve that goal. Where scientists carve the world depends on where they are justified in believing a joint exists and whether that joint is worth carving at.

Science is obliged not only to carve nature at the joints, but to serve up nature's choicest cuts.

Nothing about this view of value-laden standards undermines traditional notions of objectivity. Although I promote a value-laden conception of objectivity, the role of values in deciding what counts as sufficient evidence does not condone ignorance, delusion, or bias. On the traditional view, values are not epistemic because beliefs about how reality ought to be do not provide reasons for believing anything about how nature is actually constituted (Haack 1998,

129; Sober 2007). Values do not provide any information about how the world is, but the

“objection that an ought does not imply an is does not undermine the legitimacy of social values playing a role in determining which things we learn about the world” (Roush 2010, 166). Values do so in two ways: they influence judgments about which evidential facts are worth learning about as well as determining when a knowledge claim is justified enough for belief.

Which evidence needs gathering depends in part on practical judgments about the amount of time, energy, and resources one can devote to investigation without neglecting other practical goals. Sometimes further investigation is impractical, too costly, or too time consuming. Some kinds of investigation are unethical as well. When scientists decline to engage in medical experiments on ethical grounds, for example, they deprive the scientific community of evidence.

188 On the traditional view of objectivity, this refusal to conduct immoral research prevents scientists from understanding nature. It hinders their ability to carve nature at the joints. A value-laden image of objectivity accommodates moral and practical judgments about when further investigation is impractical or forbidden by allowing the sufficiency of evidence to be influenced by moral and practical considerations.

Values do not provide evidence of a theory's truth because reality does not necessarily conform to human desires. Similarly, animals do not come to the butcher cut, cleaned, and ready for sale. The butcher carves in order to prepare the animal for consumption, cutting conveniently sized portions and discarding the unwanted contents. The products of butchery are shaped by human aims. Knowledge, the product of investigation, is analogously shaped by human values.

Although which theory counts as objective may change from context to context due to variation in values, the truth or falsity of the theory does not change in response to our goals. Epistemic standards change from context to context, and which theory is sufficiently justified changes from context to context, but reality does not.

Value-laden objectivity does not violate the metaphysical tenants of realism and monism, nor does it imply an anything-goes relativism about theoretical justification. Some theories are not supported by the evidence and no amount of utility in application can compensate for their epistemic deficiency. Values cannot replace evidence or justify ignorance. They merely help determine whether some fact is worth investigation whether a theoretical account of that fact is sufficiently justified by the evidence. Realism and holism are compatible because while standards for sufficiently justified belief are value sensitive, nature's structure does not itself

189 depend on human beliefs or values. Reality is mind-independent. Finally, a context-sensitive conception of objectivity, one that licenses different theoretical claims in different contexts, does not undermine ontological or theoretical monism. Theoretical pluralism claims there is often, perhaps always, many true theories available for some given object of study. Ontological pluralism goes farther, arguing that for each true theory there exists a corresponding object; what appears to be one phenomena is actually many entities overlapping in space-time. Epistemic pluralism can be distinguished from these stronger forms of pluralism because there may be different epistemic standards for evaluating theories about a single object and one theory may be held to different epistemic standards. To invoke Plato's imagery, a butcher may choose to carve between any number of bones in a pig's ankle, but it does not follow that the pig has many overlapping feet. One foot can be severed along many joints.

The traditional view of objectivity should be abandoned because it is necessary but insufficient for describing objective science, which is concerned with significance as well as truth. On the traditional conception of objectivity, science is not entirely objective because it does not attempt to represent nature with complete fidelity. Rather than deferring to nature and describing its every feature, scientists pick and choose which phenomena to study. If science were only concerned with representing reality accurately, it would not ignore the many insignificant facts in the world. The value-free view also fails to account for the variety of epistemic standards found across different scientific contexts. Because there is no value-free standard of objectivity that can serve every scientific inquiry, what counts as sufficient evidential support varies depending on the non-epistemic goals of the discipline. The traditional view of

190 objectivity does not accommodate the actual practices of science, raising the question of what to call a theory that satisfies epistemic standards as well as science's non-epistemic goals. A value- laden conception of objectivity captures what it means for a theory to be genuinely scientific in both the epistemic and practical sense. Unlike traditional value-free images of objectivity, this more robust conception is necessary as well as sufficient for scientific knowledge. Science seeks significant truth, and a value-laden conception of objectivity requires both significance and truth.

5.5 Conclusion

Because all scientific hypotheses are uncertain, scientists must decide how much evidential support is sufficient to justify belief. The epistemological view I have argued for, goal- oriented epistemology, ties epistemic standards to standards for appropriate action. A scientific claim is justified in the epistemic sense when the supporting evidence is strong enough to justify action based on the belief in that claim. When a theory can be accepted for practical purposes, belief in that theory is epistemically justified. The view itself is not entirely novel, some philosophers of science (Douglas 2000; Kitcher 2011a; Rudner 1953;) and epistemologists

(DeRose 1992; Fantl and McGrath 2009; Hawthorne 2004; Stanley 2005) have suggested tying epistemic standards to moral and practical goals. The motivating argument I present in favor of goal-oriented epistemology is different, however.

The most discussed argument for values in science is the underdetermination argument which claims that for any subject of scientific investigation, the evidence will always support several rival theories (Kuhn 1962; Laudan 1984; 1990; Longino 1979; 1990; Quine 1951; Shapin

191 and Schaffer 1985). Because these rival theories are inconsistent with one another, the argument goes, scientists must choose one to believe even though the evidence does not support one theory more than another. The traditional view of epistemic justification precludes values from influencing theory choices in contexts of underdetermination because the value of a theory does not make it more likely to be true (Davis 1978; Haack 1998). Values, they argue, promote bias in scientific reasoning because scientists are often psychologically disposed to believe theories that conform to their values regardless of their truth or falsity (Almeder 2003; Gross and Levitt

1994). The existence of many alternative interpretations of the same evidence presents an interesting problem for scientific theory choice but it does not explain why values should do the choosing. Underdetermination arguments do not motivate a genuinely epistemic role for values.

They merely show that values often cause scientists to accept one theory over its rivals without having rational reasons to do so.

Arguments from theoretical pluralism are similarly deficient. Kitcher (2001) argues that many theories are not only consistent with any body of evidence, often there are many true theories that describe an object or class of objects. Because one theory can be more useful than another for particular scientific applications, he claims, scientists are more justified in accepting a theory that is both true and maximally valuable for their purposes than accepting a true but inapplicable theory. The argument turns on a conflation of two different senses of justification, however. Philosophers of science distinguish the epistemic justification of beliefs from the practical justification of actions (Haack 1998, 94, 111; Jeffrey 1956; Koertge 2000; Lacey 2005a;

Levi 1960; Simon 2006). An action is practically justified when we have good reasons to believe

192 acting that way will lead to desirable outcomes. Scientific theories, by contrast, are justified when we have reasons to believe they are true. Practical justification is about achieving goals, while epistemic justification is concerned with obtaining truth. Given two true theories with equal evidential support, acceptance of the more useful theory is more justified in the practical sense but nothing about the theory's value in application makes it more likely to be true. Useful theories are more practically justified, not more epistemically justified. Theoretical pluralism, like underdetermination, presents legitimate questions about how to choose between theories without providing a reason to believe that values justify those choices in an epistemic sense.

Feminist philosophers of science and social epistemologists have argued that encouraging a diversity of value commitments in the scientific community contributes to epistemic justification (Haraway 1988; Longino 1990; 2002a; Solomon 2001; Wylie 2003). They take historical studies of science and underdetermination arguments to show that values inevitably influence the reasoning of individual scientists. Since scientists cannot help but be influenced by their values, the scientific community must take steps to prevent widespread bias.

A community composed of people with many different values is less prone to bias because “each person's biases can check and correct the others'” (Anderson 1995, 53). As scientists with different values interact through collaboration and criticism, one person's biased assumptions can be questioned by the wider community. Although not every bias can be eliminated from the community, a diverse and critical group of scientists is less likely to let biased conclusions go unrecognized or unquestioned. The knowledge claims produced by a diverse scientific community are less likely to be biased, and therefor more likely to be true, than those generated

193 by a group of researchers with similar goals and biases. Values contribute to epistemic justification, on this view, because they are instrumental in removing bias.

The second half of chapter 2 is largely devoted to criticizing the social epistemologists' argument on the grounds that it leads to the equal legitimacy problem. If values play an epistemic role in scientific reasoning, we should not think that all values can be equally legitimate.

Proponents of values in science must ensure that their epistemology does not legitimate science influenced by racist or sexist values, for instance. Yet a scientific community with racists and sexists is more diverse than one without, and for that reason Kristen Intemann concludes too much interest in diversity leads to “the counter-intuitive consequence that we should actively encourage the participation of Nazis or members of the Flat Earth Society” (Intemann 2008,

1071). Helen Longino (2002a) appeals to the utility of diversity while trying to avoid the equal legitimacy problem but that appeal fails, I argue, because she provides no principles for determining which values are legitimate and which are not. While Miriam Solomon (2001) embraces radical diversity, explicitly arguing that any and all biases should be welcomed to the scientific community, any view that promotes racist, sexist, and religiously biased science is unacceptable.

Underlying Longino and Solomon's promotion of value diversity is the assumption that all values are equally justified, or perhaps equally unjustified (Clough and Loges 2008). Social epistemologists treat values as mere biases, not subject to empirical criticism, in need of elimination from the products of scientific inquiry. I advocate a stronger form of epistemic holism, one that recognizes values as more than arbitrary and unjustified preferences whose

194 influence needs to be constrained by critical interaction in a diverse community. Equal legitimacy problems cannot be resolved without abandoning the assumption that all values are mere biases; if values contribute to epistemic justification, some values must be objectively better than others.

Although philosophers have traditionally assumed that all values are merely subjective preferences, unjustified biases, or arbitrary assumptions, Chapter 2 argued that no philosophy of science can accept all values as equally legitimate. Even traditionalists concede that moral and practical values are important for scientific practice: Not all facts are worthy of scientific research; scientists attend to phenomena with moral and practical significance. Science seeks not just truth but significant truth (Haack 1998, 111, 116). Research methodologies must also be conducted in accordance with ethical principles. If all values are equally legitimate, no method is less ethical than any other, no fact more significant than another. All philosophers recognize the importance of value judgments in scientific practice. Because value judgments are necessary for scientific practice, as even the staunchest traditionalists admit, any satisfactory account of science must recognize some values as objectively better than others.

Goal-oriented epistemology ties the stringency of epistemic standards to the moral and practical implications of scientific knowledge. Rather than using values to choose from a number of available theories, as both pluralists and underdetermination theorists advocate, values raise or lower standards of sufficient evidence depending on the risks and rewards of belief. If wrongly accepting a theory would likely lead to undesirable consequences, scientists should demand high levels of justification in order to decrease the likelihood of realizing those risks (Douglas 2000;

195 Rudner 1953). If, on the other hand, acceptance presents a number of likely benefits and little in the way of risks, scientists can adopt relatively lax standards of sufficient evidence. I call the view goal-oriented because it maximizes the likelihood of realizing goals and preventing risks.

Goal-oriented epistemology allows epistemic standards to vary depending on the practical risks and rewards of belief. Because different scientific contexts demand different epistemic standards, goal-oriented epistemology is a form of epistemic pluralism and at least some examples of theoretical pluralism can be reinterpreted as instances of epistemic pluralism. As we saw in Chapters 2 and 5, for example, Kitcher's claim that scientists adopt different theories about biological species can be explained by a variety of epistemic standards for species identification rather than a plurality of species theories. Microbiologists need not adopt genetic theories of species in order to use genetic evidence for their classifications. More importantly, theoretical pluralism does not motivate an epistemic role for values in theory choice. When multiple true theories are available, scientists may choose one theory over another for purely practical reasons.

This dissertation motivates goal-oriented epistemology by arguing that only a value- sensitive epistemology explains why epistemic standards change from context to context. The argument turns on three premises: 1) Epistemic standards for sufficient evidential support must be determined. 2) Epistemic standards vary across scientific contexts. 3) The variation of epistemic standards cannot be explained without appeal to moral or practical values. Whereas many proponents of values in science appeal to controversial philosophical theses to explain values' epistemic influence – that evidence always underdetermines theory choice, or that every

196 object of scientific investigation is described by many true theories – the argument of Chapter 3 appeals to what I take to be a fairly uncontroversial premise, that different scientific contexts require different epistemic standards. The conclusion is that values must underlie and explain epistemic variation.

A similar strategy was once adopted by Richard Rudner (1953), but philosophers of science have largely taken his argument to show only that practical standards for action are value-laden (Jeffrey 1956; Levi 1960; Steel 2010; Steele 2012). By distinguishing between practical and epistemic justification, they argue that purely epistemic standards need not be influenced by values. As we saw in Chapter 3, however, merely distinguishing between practical and epistemic standards misses the force of the argument, which challenges the traditionalist to either deny that epistemic standards vary and supply a univocal standard that can serve all scientific contexts, or explain the plurality of epistemic standards without appeal to values. If no value-free criteria of epistemic justification can do justice to the standards scientists actually use to justify their claims, the traditional image of scientific justification as value-free does not account for scientific knowledge.

The argument from epistemic pluralism draws attention to the various criteria of sufficient evidence different scientists employ. Chapter 4 explores an example of unusually lax standards in a microbiological research program that attempts to chart the evolutionary history of microbial species. Microbial species are generally difficult to identify because, unlike most plants and animals, they are not easily distinguished by physical appearances alone (Doolittle

2010, 457). Extinct microbial species are much harder to identify still: They do not leave behind

197 well preserved fossils, scientists must rely on what little genetic evidence they can glean from contemporary microbes. Because microbes are able to acquire genes from distantly related organisms, however, unlike most plants and animals, a microbe's genes do not always indicate the history of that particular species. The organism may have gained its genes from any number of sources. The complexity of the biological mechanisms of genetic exchange makes charting the history of microbial species exceedingly difficult. Microbes do not have a single evolutionary history; they are made up of many genes from many sources, many of which have unique histories of their own (Woese 1987).

Microbiologists know there are many problems with their means of classification. They also know that many of their classifications are probably flawed, and yet they continue to research ancient microbial species, theorizing about their history, classifying and locating them in graphical representations of the history of life. Given the weakness of genetic evidence, how is it that claims about the ancient evolutionary history of microbes are sufficiently justified? Goal- oriented epistemology sanctions lowering epistemic standards when the practical risks of doing so are low. Because very little harm will come from mistaken classifications of long extinct microbes, microbiologists do not need evidential support to be overwhelmingly strong. It is unclear how the traditional view could accommodate such variation in epistemic standards without appeal to practical values, especially since microbiologists themselves appeal to the usefulness of their criteria to justify continued use of current evidential standards for species identification (Stackerbrandt et al. 2002).

Allowing values to lower epistemic standards is sure to raise concerns with those who

198 oppose values as epistemic influences. Traditionalists already worry that treating values as epistemic means treating them like evidence, as reasons for belief (Haack 1998, 129). The concern is that scientists might abandon honest inquiry and either justify their beliefs with values instead of evidence or simply ignore any evidence they do not find convenient (Almeder 2003;

Gross and Levitt 1994; Koertge 2000; Pinnick 2003). If goals and desires can justify scientific theories, they wonder, what prevents scientists from believing whatever they want? Goal- oriented epistemology does not treat values as evidence. Significance alone does not make a theory likely to be true; evidence is always necessary for epistemic justification. Values merely determine how much evidence is sufficient for belief. They are never epistemically sufficient on their own. Scientific justification is holistic in the sense that it involves reasoning about both facts and values. Whereas reasoning about facts and values are traditionally separated into two autonomous spheres of philosophical discourse, normative and practical on the one hand, factive and epistemic on the other, I believe values must influence standards of sufficient evidence and evidence must inform our value judgments.

Throughout the course of this dissertation, several question have arisen which demand more attention than they have received thus far. One question concerns what factors a traditionalist might appeal to in order to explain epistemic variation. One possible explanation that arose in Chapter 3 is the availability of evidence. Less evidence might be demanded for microbial classification, for instance, simply because less evidence is available. The availability of evidence is, however, influenced by moral, practical, financial, and technological factors. In microbiology, and many other fields, scientists are increasingly reliant on computers and

199 software to gather, organize, and interpret data. Moral constraints on research methods provide another limitation on the gathering of evidence. If the availability of evidence is to explain the variation of epistemic standards, we must be able to judge what evidence is unavailable due to moral and practical constraints and what evidence is unavailable in principle. While the question is intriguing, it is hard to imagine how to determine which evidence is out of reach only because we have yet to dedicate enough time, energy, and resources to gathering it (which is determined by decisions based on values) and which evidence will forever be out of reach. In order to address the issue adequately, one would need to know which facts will forever be unobservable or undetectable. Distinguishing the practical availability of evidence from what evidence is available in principle primarily requires research into our cognitive and technological limitations.

Determining how much evidence is unavailable due to the influence of value-laden research decisions and how much is unavailable in principle is important to the project of explaining the variation of epistemic standards, but falls outside the scope of this dissertation.

One issue with constraining epistemic standards in light of the availability of evidence, which I raised in Chapter 3, is the observation that evidence must sometimes be insufficient. The available evidence cannot always be sufficient for belief; sometimes scientists do not have enough evidence to reach a firm conclusion. A sophisticated traditionalist might argue that there is a minimum threshold of sufficient justification so that the available evidence only justifies belief when a certain level of confidence is achieved. On that view, what counts as sufficient evidence might change from context to context but standards of evidential sufficiently would not be allowed to fall below a certain minimum threshold. What level of confidence might service as

200 a minimum epistemic threshold? What reasons could we have to favor one possible threshold over another?

Answers to these questions are not only of interest to the traditionalist approach, either. If there is such a minimum threshold, it may inform goal-oriented epistemology as well. Stipulating a minimal standard would prevent goal-oriented epistemic criteria from falling too low, heading off concerns about low-risk, high-reward propositions being held to excessively weak standards.

The variability of epistemic standards across scientific contexts raises the question of when we are obligated to suspend judgment because the evidence is insufficient. Although standards for sufficient evidence vary, there may be some threshold below which no justified claim can fall. In order to answer questions about a minimum threshold for sufficient evidential support, more research into the epistemology of knowledge claims based on severely limited information is needed. Two kinds of research might prove informative: One is scientific cases where decisions must be made about when conclusions are warranted by the limited evidence and when scientists must suspend judgment. The other is epistemological research into philosophers' work on inferences based on severely limited information. Both may provide examples of possible minimum thresholds of justification or principles for establishing such a minimum.

Finally, I have spent considerable time arguing that Kitcher's theoretical pluralism with regard to species can be understood as a case of epistemic pluralism. Rather than accepting different theories of species, scientists in different contexts may demand different levels or kinds of evidence. Although the argument works for species in particular, it is an open question as to whether all cases of theoretical pluralism can be given an epistemic reading or if species are just

201 a special case. My argument does provide a framework for analyzing other cases of pluralism:

When different theories attend to different features of the same phenomena, the way microbial species theories attend to genes and paleontological theories represent morphology, those features may be understood as providing different kinds of evidence rather than different theoretical descriptions. More research is needed, however, to see if this strategy can be carried out in all instances. Prominent examples of theoretical pluralism should be examined to determine whether they depend on emphasizing different aspects the same phenomena, and whether those different aspects provide different kinds of evidence for the same claim.

This dissertation offers a view of values in science that runs counter to traditional conceptions of scientific reasoning as value-free without violating traditional views about the importance of rigorous attention to evidence or the mind-independence of reality. Goal-oriented epistemology is non-traditional because it ascribes epistemic significance to values in deciding whether or not a claim is justified. Values do not, on this view, decide between multiple competing theories of the same phenomena, as underdetermination theorists and theoretical pluralists contend. Rather, values determine how much evidential support is sufficient for justification. Values must play this role, I have argued, because no value-free influence can adequately explain why different scientific contexts demand different standards of evidential sufficiency. Value judgments are necessary for determining how stringent epistemic standards should be. Importantly, the aim of this dissertation is not to dictate epistemic standards for science. I take it that scientists already adjust their epistemic standards in light of the potential benefits and risks of their research. Science standards, I have argued, are lowered when it is

202 practical to do so and raised in order to avoid potential harms. The principles of goal-oriented epistemology are informed by scientific practice.

The view offered is, in some ways, more traditional than other arguments for holism. It is not committed to the idea that reality is constructed or mind-dependent. It does not require the belief that reality consists of a plurality of objects overlapping in space-time, or even the idea that there are always many true or well justified theories of the same phenomena. In other ways, however, goal-oriented epistemology is more radical than other forms of holism. Unlike

Longino's social epistemology, it portrays values as more than merely instrumentally necessary for removing biases. Values help determine when we are justified in believing a theory to be true.

Theoretical pluralism, by contrast, only requires values to decide between multiple theories we already know to be true. For goal-oriented epistemology, failing absolute certainty, there can be no judgments about what is justified without considering the moral, political, and practical implications of belief.

Although goal-oriented epistemology is not a terribly complicated view, the argumentative approach I adopt is complicated. It requires attention to the influence of moral, social, and practical decisions about what to investigate, how to investigate it, and when no further investigation is needed. Epistemic principles for science cannot be isolated from considerations about the methods of practicing scientists, including the financial and moral constraints placed on their inquiries, their cognitive constraints, and the ability of technology to overcome those limitations. Such complications should be expected. Science is a complex social phenomena that requires cooperation and competition, demands public resources, upsets long-

203 held assumptions and long-standing social orders, creates moral quandaries, and makes possible previously unimaginable destruction as well as progress. Scientific inquiry is motivated and sustained by our vision for the future; without goals for ourselves and others there would be no reason to seek further understanding of the natural world. Science as we know it is essentially social. Not only are scientific beliefs motivated, caused, sustained, and constrained by human aims, values are essential for determining the epistemic status of scientific claims.

204 Bibliography

Almeder, Robert (2003). “Equality Feminism and Academic Feminism,” in Scrutinizing

Feminist Epistemology: An Examination of Gender in Science. Cassandra Pinnick,

Noretta Koertge, and Robert Almeder (Eds.) Rutgers, New Jersey. pp. 183-201.

Andam, Cheryl P., Williams, David, and Gogarten, Peter J. (2010). “Natural Taxonomy in Light

of Horizontal Gene Transfer.” Biology and Philosophy 25: 589-602.

Anderson, Elizabeth (1995). “Feminist Epistemology: An Interpretation and a Defense,”

Hypatia, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 50-84.

Anderson, Elizabeth (2004). "Uses of Value Judgments in Science: A General Argument, with

Lessons from a Case Study of Feminist Research on Divorce," Hypatia, Vol. 19, No. 1: 1-

24.

Ayer, Alfred J. (1936). Language, Truth, and Logic. V. Gollancz, London.

Bapteste, Eric and Boucher, Yan (2009). “Lateral Gene Transfer Challenges Principles of

Microbial Systematics,” Trends in Microbiology 16: 200-207.

Bapteste, Eric and Burian, Richard M. (2010). "On the Need for Integrative Phylogenomics, and

Some Steps Toward its Creation," Biology and Philosophy 25: 711-736.

Brown, Matthew J. (2010). “Genuine Problems and the Significance of Science.” Contemporary

Pragmatism, Vol. 7, No. 2: 131-153.

Carnap, Rudolf (1935). Philosophy and Logical Syntax. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.,

London.

205 Cho, Adrian (2012). “Higgs Boson Makes its Debut After Decades-Long Search,” Science 337:

141-143.

Cartwright, Nancy (1999). The Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science. Cambridge

University Press, Cambridge.

Churchman, C. West (1956). “Science and Decision Making.” Philosophy of Science, Vol. 23,

No. 3: 247-249.

Cleland, Carol E. (2002). “Methodological and Epistemic Differences Between Historical

Science and Experimental Science,” Philosophy of Science Vol. 69 No. 3: 447-451.

Clough, Sharyn (2004). "Having it All: Naturalized Normativity in Feminist Science Studies,"

Hypatia, Vol. 19 No.1: 102-118.

Clough, Sharyn and Loges, William E. (2008). "Racist Value Judgments as Objectively False

Beliefs: A Philosophical and Social-Psychological Analysis," Journal of Social

Philosophy Vol. 39, No. 1: 77-95.

Crasnow, Sharon (2008). "Feminist Philosophy of Science: 'Standpoint' and Knowledge."

Science and Education 17: 1089-1110.

Dagan, Tal and Martin, William (2006). “The Tree of One Percent.” Genome Biology 7:118.

Daston, Lorraine and Galison, Peter (2007). Objectivity. MIT Press, Brooklyn.

Davis, Bernard (1978). “The Moralistic Fallacy,” Nature 272: 390.

DeRose, Keith (1992). “Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions,” Philosophy and

Phenomenological Research 52: 913-29.

Devitt, Michael (2002). “Underdetermination and Realism,” Philosophical Issues 12: 26-50.

206 Doolittle, Ford W. (2010) "The Attempt on the Life of the Tree of Life: Science, Philosophy, and

Politics," Biology and Philosophy 25: 455-473.

Doolittle, Ford and Bapteste, Eric (2007). “Pattern Pluralism and the Tree of Life Hypothesis.”

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104: 2043-2049.

Douglas, Heather (2000). "Inductive Risk and Values in Science" Philosophy of Science, Vol. 67

No. 4: 559-579.

Douglas, Heather (2004). “The Irreducible Complexity of Objectivity.” Synthese, 138: 453-437.

Douglas, Heather (2009). Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal. University of Pittsburgh

press, Pittsburgh.

Douglas, Heather (2014). “The Value of Cognitive Values.” Philosophy of Science, 80 (5): 796-

806.

Elliott, Kevin C. (2011). “Direct and Indirect Roles for Values in Science,” Philosophy of

Science, Vol. 78, No. 2: 303-324.

Ereshefsky, Marc (1992). “Eliminative Pluralism.” Philosophy of Science 59 (4): 671-690

Ereshefsky, Marc (2001). The Poverty of the Linnaean Hierarchy: A Philosophical Study of

Biological Taxonomy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ereshefsky, Marc (2010). "Microbiology and the Species Problem," Biology and Philosophy

25: 553-568.

Fantl, Jeremy and McGrath, Matthew (2009). Knowledge in an Uncertain World. Oxford

University Press, New York.

Feyerabend, Paul (1975). Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge.

207 Humanities Press, New Jersey.

Franklin, Laura (2007). “Bacteria, Sex, and Systematics.” Philosophy of Science 74: 69-95.

Franklin-Hall, Laura (2010). "Trashing Life's Tree," Biology and Philosophy, 25: 689-709.

Giere, Ronal (1999). Science without Laws. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Gillies, Donald (1993) “The Duhem Thesis and the Quine Thesis,” in Philosophy of Science in

the Twentieth Century, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, pp. 98-116.

Gogarten, Peter J., Doolittle, Ford W., and Lawrence, Jeffrey G. (2002). “Prokaryotic Evolution

in Light of Gene Transfer.” Molecular Biology and Evolution 19 (12): 2226-2238.

Goldman, Alvin I. (1995). “Social Epistemology, Interests, and Truth,” Philosophical Topics,

Vol. 31, No. 1: 171-187.

Goldman, Alvin (1999). Knowledge in a Social World. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Goldman, Alvin (2002). Review of The Fate of Knowledge by Helen Longino. Science, New

Series, Vol. 296, No. 5576, pp. 2148-2149.

Goldman, Alvin (2011). "Èxperts: Which Ones Should You Trust?" in Social Epistemology:

Essential Readings. Alvin Goldman and Dennis Whitcomb (Eds.) Oxford University

Press, New York.

Grifiths, Paul E. (1999). “Squaring the Circle: Natural Kinds with Historical Essences.” In:

Wilson, R.A. (Ed.): Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,

pp. 209-228.

Gross, Paul and Levitt, Norman (1994). Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and its Quarrels

with Science. Johns Hopkins, Baltimore.

208 Haack, Susan (1998). Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate: Unfashionable Essays. University of

Chicago Press, Chicago.

Haber, Matthew H. (2012). “Multilevel Lineages and Multidimensional Trees: The Levels of

Lineage and Phylogeny Reconstruction.” Philosophy of Science 79 (5): 609-623.

Hacking, Ian (1999). The Social Construction of What? Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Haraway, Donna (1988). "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the

Privilege of Partial Perspective," Feminist Studies Vol. 14, No. 3 pp. 575-599.

Hawthorne, John (2004). Knowledge and Lotteries. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Hempel, Carl (1965). Aspects of Scientific Explanation and other Essays in the Philosophy of

Science. Free press, New York.

Hull, David (1970). “Contemporary Systematic Philosophies’.” Annual Review of Ecology and

Systematics 1: 19-54.

Hull, David (1988). Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and

Conceptual Development of Science. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Intemann, Kristen (2008). “Increasing the Number of Feminist Scientists: Why Feminist Aims

are not Served by the Underdetermination Thesis,” Science and Education 17: 1065-

1079.

Jeffrey, Richard C. (1956) “Valuation and Acceptance of Scientific Hypotheses,” Philosophy of

Science, Vol. 23, No. 3: 237-246.

Kitcher, Philip (1993). The Advancement of Science: Science without Legend, Objectivity

without Illusions. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

209 Kitcher, Philip (2001). Science, Truth, and Democracy. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Kitcher, Philip (2011a). Science in a Democratic Society. Prometheus Books, Amherst, New

York.

Kitcher, Philip (2011b). “Epistemology Without History is Blind,” Erkenntnis Vol. 75: 505-524

Koertge, Noretta (2000). “Science, Values, and the Value of Science,” Philosophy of Science 67:

S45-S57.

Kuhn, Thomas (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press,

Chicago.

Kuhn, Thomas (1977). The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and

Change. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Lacey, Hugh (1999). "On Cognitive and Social Values: A Reply to My Critics," Science and

Education, 8: 89-103.

Lacey, Hugh (2005a). Values and Objectivity in Science: The Current Controversy About

Transgenic Crops. Rowan and Littlefield Publishers, Oxford.

Lacey, Hugh (2005b). “On the Interplay of the Cognitive and the Social in Scientific Practices.”

Philosophy of Science, Vol. 72, No. 5: 977-988.

Lakatos, Imre (1978). “Science and Pseudoscience.” in The Methodology of Scientific Resarch

Programmes: Philosophical Papers Volume 1, John Worrall and Gregory Currie (Eds.),

pp. 1-7Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Lan, Ruiting and Reeves, Peter R. (2001). “When Does a Clone Deserve a Name? A Perspective

on Bacterial Species Based on Population Genetics.” Trends in Microbiology 9 (9): 419-

210 424.

Laudan, Larry (1984). Science and Values: The Aims of Science and Their Role in Scientific

Debate. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Laudan, Larry (1990). “Demystifying Underdetermination,” in Scientific Theories. Savage, C.

Wade (Ed.) University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. pp. 267-297.

Lawrence, Jeffry G. and Hendrickson, Heather (2003). “Lateral Gene Transfer: When Will

Adolescence End?” Molecular Microbiology 50 (3): 739-749.

Lawrence, Jeffrey G. and Retchless, Adam C. (2010). "The Myth of Bacterial Species and

Speciation," Biology and Philosophy, 25: 569-588.

Leach, James (1968). “Explanation and Value Neutrality,” The British Journal for the Philosophy

of Science, Vol. 19, No. 2: 93-108.

Levi, Isaac (1960). “Must Scientists Make Value Judgments?” The Journal of Philosophy, Vol.

57, No. 11: 345-357.

Longino, Helen (1979). “Evidence and Hypothesis: An Analysis of Evidential Relations,”

Philosophy of Science 46: 35-56.

Longino, Helen (1990). Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific

Inquiry. Princeton University Press, Princeton.

Longino, Helen (1996). "Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Values in Science: Rethinking the

Dichotomy," In Feminism, Science, and the Philosophy of Science, Lynn Hankinson

Nelson and Jack Nelson (Eds.) pp. 39-58. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht.

Longino, Helen (2002a). The Fate of Knowledge. Princeton University Press, Princeton.

211 Longino, Helen (2002b). “Science and the Common Good: Thoughts on Philip Kitcher’s

Science, Truth, and Democracy,” Philosophy of Science, Vol. 69, No. 4: 560-568

Longino, Helen (2002c). “Reply to Philip Kitcher,” Philosophy of Science 69: 573-577.

Longino, Helen and Doell, Ruth (1983). "Body, Bias, and Behavior: A Comparative Analysis of

Reasoning in Two Areas of Biological Science," Signs, Vol. 9, No. 2: 206-227.

Machamer, Peter and Douglas, Heather (1999). "Cognitive and Social Values," Science and

Education 8: 45-54.

Mayr, Ernst (1970). Populations, Species, and Evolution. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

McMullin, Ernan (1982). “Values in Science,” PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the

Philosophy of Science Association 1982 (4): 3-28.

Mikuleky, Donald C. (2007). “Causality and Complexity: The Myth of Objectivity in Science,”

Chemistry and Biodiversity 4: 2480-2491.

Millar, Craig D. and Lambert, David M. (2013). “Ancient DNA: Towards a Million-Year-Old

Genome,” Nature 499: 34-35.

Mitchell, Sandra (2004). “The Prescribed and Proscribed Values in Science Policy,” in Science,

Values, and Objectivity, Peter Machamer and Gereon Wolters (Eds.) pp. 14-23. University

of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh.

Mitchell, Sandra (2009). Unsimple Truths: Science, Complexity, and Policy. University of

Chicago Press, Chicago.

O'Malley Maureen, and Dupré, John (2007). “Size Doesn't Matter: Towards a More Inclusive

Philosophy of Biology.” Biology and Philosophy 22: 155-191.

212 Okasha, Samir (2002). “Darwinian Metaphysics: Species and the Question of Essentialism,”

Synthese 131: 191-213.

Pinnick, Cassandra L. (2003). “Feminist Epistemology: Implications for the Philosophy of

Science” in Scrutinizing Feminist Epistemology: An Examination of Gender in Science.

Cassandra, Koertge, Noretta, and Almedar, Robert (Eds.) Rutgers University Press, New

Brunswick.

Pinnick, Cassandra, Koertge, Noretta, and Almedar, Robert (Eds.) (2003). Scrutinizing Feminist

Epistemology: An Examination of Gender in Science. Rutgers University Press, New

Brunswick.

Plato (1925). Phaedrus in Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 9. Trans. Harold N. Fowler. Harvard

University Press, Cambridge.

Popper, Karl (1959). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Hutchinson & Co., London.

Putnam, Hilary (1981). Reason, Truth, and History, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Putnam, Hilary (1988). Representation and Reality. MIT Press, Cambridge.

Putnam, Hilary (1990). Realism with a Human Face. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Putnam, Hilary (1992). Renewing Philosophy. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Quine, Willard V. O. (1951) “Two Dogmas of Empiricism.” The Philosophical Review 60: 20-

43.

Richerson, Peter J. and Boyd, Robert (2005). Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed

Human Evolution. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Rieppel, Olivier (2010). "The Series, the Network, and the Tree: Changing Metaphors of Order

213 in Nature," Biology and Philosophy, 25: 475-496.

Roush, Sherrilyn (2007). "Constructive Empiricism and the Role of Social Values in Science." in

Value-Free Science? Ideals and Illusions. Harold Kincaid, John Dupré, and Alison Wylie

(Eds.) Oxford University Press, New York. pp. 164-187.

Rudner, Richard (1953). “The Scientist Qua Scientist Makes Value Judgements,” Philosophy of

Science 20: 1-6.

Ruphy, Stephanie (2006). “Empiricism All the Way Down: A Defense of the Value-Neutrality of

Science in Response to Helen Longino's Contextual Empiricism,” Perspectives on

Science 14 (2): 189-214.

Schickore, Jutta and Steinle, Friedrich (Eds) (2006). Revisiting Discovery and Justification:

Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on the Context Distinction. Springer,

Dordrecht.

Shapin, Steven and Schaffer, Simon (1985). Leviathan and the Air Pump. Princeton University

Press, Princeton.

Simon, Jeremy (2006). “The Proper Ends of Science: Philip Kitcher, Science, and the Good,”

Philosophy of Science, Vol. 73, No. 2: 194-214.

Slater, Matthew H. and Borghini, Andrea (2011) “Introduction: Lessons from the Scientific

Butchery” in Carving Nature at its Joints: Natural Kinds in Metaphysics and Science.

Campbell, Joseph Keim, O'Rourke, Michael, and Slater, Matthew H. (Eds.) MIT Press,

Cambridge.

Sober, Elliot (2001). “What is the Problem of Simplicity?” in Simplicity, Inference, and

214 Modelling: Keeping it Sophisticatedly Simple. Arnold Zellner, Hugo Keuzenkamp, and

Michael McAleer (Eds.), pp. 13-31. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Sober, Elliot (2007). "Evidence and Value-Freedom," in Value-Free Science? Ideals and

Illusions. Harold Kincaid, John Dupré, and Alison Wylie (Eds.) Oxford University Press,

New York. pp. 109-119.

Solomon, Miriam (2001). Social Empiricism. MIT Press, Cambridge.

Stackerbrandt, E., Frederiksen, W., Garrity, G. et al. (2002). "Report of the ad hoc Committee for

the Re-evaluation of the Species Definition in Bacteriology," International Journal of

Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology 52: 1043-1047.

Stanley, Jason. (2005). Knowledge and Practical Interests. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Steel, Daniel (2010). “Epistemic Values and the Argument from Inductive Risk,” Philosophy of

Science Vol. 77, No.1: 14-34.

Steele, Katie (2012). “The Scientist qua Policy Advisor Makes Value Judgments,” Philosophy

of Science Vol. 79, No. 5: 893-904.

Stich, Stephen (1990). The Fragmentation of Reason: Preface to a Pragmatic Theory of

Cognitive Evaluation. MIT Press, Cambridge.

Suárez-Díaz, Edna and Anaya-Muñoz, Victor H. (2008). “History, Objectivity, and the

Construction of Molecular Phylogenies.” Studies in the History and Philosophy of

Biology and Biomedical Science 39: 451-468.

Velasco, Joel D. (2012). “The Future of Systematics: Tree Thinking without the Tree.”

Philosophy of Science 79 (5): 624-636.

215 Velasco, Joel D. and Sober, Elliot (2010). “Testing for Treeness: Lateral Gene Transfer,

Phylogenetic Inference, and Model Selection,” Biology and Philosophy 25: 675-687.

Woese, Carl (1987). “Bacterial Evolution.” Microbiological Reviews 51 (2): 221-271.

Wylie, Alison (2003). "Why Standpoint Matters," in Science and Other Cultures. Figueroa,

Robert and Harding, Sandra (Eds.) Routledge, New York.

Wylie, Alison and Nelson, Lynn Hankinson (2007). "Coming to Terms with the Values of

Science: Insights from Feminist Science Studies Scholarship," in Value-Free Science?

Ideals and Illusions. Harold Kincaid, John Dupré, and Alison Wylie (Eds.) Oxford

University Press, New York. pp. 58-86.

216