Why Simpler Computer Simulation Models Can Be Epistemically Better for Informing Decisions

For computer simulation models to usefully inform climate risk management, uncertainties in model projections must be explored and characterized. Because doing so requires running the model many ti..

Attention to Values Helps Shape Convergence Research

Convergence research is driven by specific and compelling problems and requires deep integration across disciplines. The potential of convergence research is widely recognized, but questions remain about how to design, facilitate, and assess such research. Here we analyze a seven-year, twelve-million-dollar convergence project on sustainable climate risk management to answer two questions. First, what is the impact of a project-level emphasis on the values that motivate and tie convergence research to the compelling problems? Second, how does participation in convergence projects shape the research of postdoctoral scholars who are still in the process of establishing themselves professionally? We use an interview-based approach to characterize what the project specifically enabled in each participant’s research. We find that (a) the project pushed participants’ research into better alignment with the motivating concept of convergence research and that this effect was stronger for postdoctoral scholars than for more senior faculty. (b) Postdocs’ self-assessed understanding of key project themes, however, appears unconnected to metrics of project participation, raising questions about training and integration. Regarding values, (c) the project enabled heightened attention to values in the research of a large minority of participants. (d) Participants strongly believe in the importance of explicitly reflecting on values that motivate and pervade scientific research, but they question their own understanding of how to put value-focused science into practice. This mismatch of perceived importance with poor understanding highlights an unmet need in the practice of convergence science

Towards Integrated Ethical and Scientific Analysis of Geoengineering: A Research Agenda

Concerns about the risks of unmitigated greenhouse gas emissions are growing. At the same time, confidence that international policy agreements will succeed in considerably lowering anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions is declining. Perhaps as a result, various geoengineering solutions are gaining attention and credibility as a way to manage climate change. Serious consideration is currently being given to proposals to cool the planet through solar-radiation management. Here we analyze how the unique and nontrivial risks of geoengineering strategies pose fundamental questions at the interface between science and ethics. To illustrate the importance of integrated ethical and scientific analysis, we define key open questions and outline a coupled scientific-ethical research agenda to analyze solar-radiation management geoengineering proposals. We identify nine key fields of coupled research including whether solar-radiation management can be tested, how quickly learning could occur, normative decisions embedded in how different climate trajectories are valued, and justice issues regarding distribution of the harms and benefits of geoengineering. To ensure that ethical analyses are coupled with scientific analyses of this form of geoengineering, we advocate that funding agencies recognize the essential nature of this coupled research by establishing an Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications program for solar-radiation management

Leading with ethics, aiming for policy: New opportunities for philosophy of science

This is the Rotman Institute Keynote Address. In this presentation I will argue that philosophers of science are missing important opportunities to contribute to essential dialogues and make a positive impact on our various communities. From our own institutions to national and international policy, the insights of philosophy of science can make important contributions to many important and essential realms, from pedagogy to international policy. I focus on two case studies—research ethics training for scientists and climate change science and policy—and illustrate on the one hand, the value of enlarging the scope of our work and developing a more robust appreciation of the usefulness of the methods of philosophy of science for contributing to answers to important questions such as these and, on the other hand, how working in these areas would not only expand the scope but positively enrich the methods and practices of philosophers of science. While these topics, and the typical approach to training scientists the proper “procedures,” are certainly important, this vision of research ethics is far too limited a venue to convey an appreciation of the full extent of the ethical dimensions of scientific research. As I develop the first case study, I argue for the adoption of a more adequate model of research ethics in science and engineering, one to which the contributions of philosophers of science would be essential. Typical research ethics training is focuses on responsible conduct of research issues (ethical aspects of the process of conducting scientific research, such as: falsification, fabrication, and plagiarism; care for human and nonhuman subjects; responsible authorship issues; analysis and care for data; and conflicts of interests). While I do not deny the importance of RCR issues, they are far too limited to provide a basis for scientists and engineers to appreciate the full range of ethical issues they face. I offer an account of a more robust model, what I and my colleagues have labeled the Ethical Dimensions of Scientific Research (EDSR) and argue that EDSR not only offers a more adequate model of the ethical literacy needed by scientists and engineers, but that it also provides an opportunity for philosophers of science to contribute by designing ethics training responsive to epistemic concerns. In developing this analysis, I argue that the work of feminist epistemologists and philosophers of science who have examined the relationship between ethical and epistemic issues serves as a key element in developing this account. On the basis of the analysis of this case study, I call for the development of an applied approach to the philosophy of science, similar to contemporary practices in bioethics, in which philosophers of science enhance both the practice of science as well as contribute to policy decisions within the NSF and other science and engineering institutions. My second case study focuses on a new role for philosophy of science in both research design and in science policy. I argue for an essential role for philosophy of science in the identification of values and assumptions that are intrinsic to scientific research, that is, are embedded in the very context of hypothesis development, data gathering and analysis, governing equations, models, strategies for addressing uncertainty, and the like, and the full analysis of their epistemic and ethical import. This example is designed to illustrate the importance of working to ensure that all science, but particularly policy-relevant science, is as transparent as possible concerning embedded values and their intertwined epistemic and ethical import. I argue that philosophers of science need to understand, and perhaps at times even participate in, the policy context so that we can ensure that our work is framed in ways to be of benefit in this arena. Using the case study of climate science, I examine two issues; 1) how climate models, and in particular integrated assessment models (IAMS), which deal with high levels of uncertainty about future climate impacts, imbed values and assumptions that are ethically salient and 2) how philosophy of science can play a leading role in enhancing research that foregrounds the importance of taking account of gender in the context of climate change science and policy. Issue 1: IAMs have been rapidly developing over the past two decades as a way to inform policy and decision-making regarding climate change, but are also used within science to better understand complex system interactions, particularly between socioeconomic and biophysical processes. I illustrate the importance of the role of philosophers of science and other science studies theorists in: identifying key sources of overconfidence imbedded in such IAMS; providing insights on how best to quantify types of uncertainty; helping to critically reevaluate previous studies to help determine when omitting low probability, high impact events can lead to poor decision making; and the like. I argue that this type of transparency would not only lead to better policy-making, but would also be likely to point to reveal significant questions in need of scientific analyses. Issue 2: Gender issues are only now gaining recognition in the realm of climate policy and science. In this section of the talk I argue that feminist philosophy of science can play an essential role in moving discussion of issues of gender and climate change forward both in the context of empirical design, and also in the policy realm. I argue that the work of feminist science studies theorists and epistemologists in identifying value judgments and tracing their impact in allegedly ‘objective’ scientific practices and, in particular, in economics, is highly relevant to the growing literature on gender and climate change. Furthermore, I demonstrate that the intertwining of ethical and epistemic concerns so central to feminist epistemology (e.g. Code, Harding), provides new resources for this literature that augments its social justice perspectiv

Beyond Philosophy: Nietzsche, Foucault, Anzaldúa

This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of the University of Minnesota. Learn more at the TOME website, which can be found at the following web address: openmonographs.org.Questions of whether anything exceeds reasonable sense and meaning have persisted throughout the history of philosophy. These questions have even continued in postmodern thought as well as in liberatory philosophies in which many kinds of events and lineages are experienced and seen as beyond philosophy. In this cowritten text, distinguished philosophers Nancy Tuana and Charles Scott pay particular attention to lineages and their dynamism as they develop the idea of things beyond philosophy, beyond norms. This is not a history of philosophy or a critical study of a particular philosopher but a way to engage experience around dimensions of events that are beyond measuring, counting, meaning, and value. These attunements, they assert, are vitally important for the ways people orient themselves in the world and comport themselves in it. Tuana and Scott build on the alternatives to normative ethics that they find in the work of Nietzsche, Foucault, and Anzaldúa. They urge attunement to the world as a way to speak about what is impossible to give voice to, to live in the spaces between speech and the unspeakable, and to conceptualize and articulate the boundaries of rational sensibility