Philosophy of Science - Values in Science

This video outlines the value-free ideal in philosophy of science, and then presents one of the central challenges to this ideal, the argument from inductive risk.

Articles mentioned:
Heather Douglas, "Inductive risk and values in science"
Justin Biddle, "Transient underdetermination and values in science"
Richard Jeffrey, "Valuation and acceptance of scientific hypothesis"
Richard Rudner, "The scientist qua scientist makes value judgments"
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Scientific objectivity"

0:00 - The value-free ideal
11:53 - Inductive risk
20:30 - Objections
31:32 - Extending inductive risk
39:39 - Eliminating value judgment?

[squatch]

You would make a good philosophy prof.

[DeadEndFrog]

great video! The scope of the debates goes to the heart of 'fact value' debates. Especially relevant when it comes to judgment on the 'facts' of life. Pessimism/optimism, antinatalism/natalism ect.

I always saw the debate within science as being about the fact that all scientists have to 'play' on the same field. That is to say, the effects of every study is still consistant across all observers. Their interpretation differs, and their biases differ, aswell as their value judgment on what to test and what not to test. But what remains is the consistancy of the effects. (the obvious analogy to take is how observers disagree on some aspects in relativity, but ultimatly agree on what happend happend.)
dead people stay dead, sick people stay sick, ect.

Its a very pragmatic consideration. Where one doesn't even care about these things because the method itself is supposed to weed out false assumptions in the long run, because the effects stay consistant (nature works as it does) and all we do is play around within that playingfield. So not everthing goes. Given enough time, we are supposed to weed out the interpretations, biases, and value judgments, by continues testing, and looking for consistancy.
Il expand further if its unclear.

[TheMindIlluminated]

Best philosophy channel on YouTube, pure content, and ACCURATE content, as opposed to the more major channels that are all gloss but make 6 minute simple videos filled with errors.

[Mon]

You certainly have a wonderful gift for explaining things and getting to the meat of the matter. Great stuff

[orangereplyer]

It seems like the argument turns on an ambiguity of "accept".

We can accept a hypothesis as good grounds for further inquiry, or as good grounds for practical matters. Call the first sense of acceptance, "E-acceptance" (for "epistemic") and the second sense, "P-acceptance" (for "practical").

It's clear that, for P-acceptance, the threshold will depend on the gravity of consequences as determined by social values. But P-acceptance comes in at the domain of application, not the domain of discovery.

E-acceptance, on the other hand, seems like it should be guided only by epistemic values. The question is, "is this hypothesis solid enough to build further knowledge?".

I'd have to read up on this, but what about the fact that a p value of 0.05 seems to be sufficient to reject the null hypothesis, in a _wide_ range of studies? And what about the fact that, to P-accept a hypothesis, we would ask for multiple papers and replications?

Of course, this all turns on the distinction holding water; maybe it's too fine-grained for practice. But if we're talking about an _ideal_, I think the distinction holds up.

[unknownknownsphilosophy]

That's my boyfriend! Always delivers.

[MooshBoosh]

Just wanted to say, I'm planning on really buckling down and rewatching some of your videos in the summer because I'm taking Philosophy of Science next term. The whole field is fascinating to me and I feel lucky to have found you before delving into that class. I've read some Feyerabend but thats it. So values of Science (he talks about science being anti-humanist) is a rich topic that I really love. Im sure it will be good food for thought, and inspirations for my later papers :)

[Sapiensis]

thank you you've shared this idea and your explanation is easy to understand. Especially in my country Indonesia, philosophy of science is less often discussed, so i very grateful founded this video

[dino_rider]

In the case of physics and astronomy, its not that scientists dont use social values to infer hypothesis validation, they DO, they jus dont rely on already existing social values as none exist, they create their own social values for that purpose, which has to do w complexity of methods involved, p-value, number of citations, etc. but its still a social value system.

[whycantiremainanonymous]

What about the social value of reputation? Actual scientific justification is crucially reliant on reputation. Reputable scholars' claims are taken seriously. Claims made by scholars without an established reputation or with an established bad reputation usually don't get published, and are dismissed if they do.
There's a reasonable heuristic at play here (you can't check everything people claim yourself, so you should weight the degree of your trust of different sources), though it can be, and has been, abused as part of the struggle between different schools of thought in different fields of science (one's reputation depends on the "camp" one belongs to). But nowadays, with the overcrowding of academia and the general deluge of information people are exposed to, this heuristic crowds out other considerations.

[Neonblaa]

Hi, I am using your examples of the setting of signifance level in regard to vaccine research in my master's thesis on values in science. Do you have a reference for these examples or did you come up with them yourself? Thanks for a good video on the topic btw, you are really good at making abstract theory accessible.

[Tschoo]

Yo I wrote my BA thesis about this topic