Claims that science should be more democratic than it is frequently arouse opposition. In this essay, I distinguish my own views about the democratization of science from the more ambitious theses defended by Paul Feyerabend. I argue that it is unlikely that the complexity of some scientific debates will allow for resolution according to the methodological principles of any formal confirmation theory, suggesting instead that major revolutions rest on conflicts of values. Yet these conflicts should not be dismissed as irresoluble.

How can we determine an acceptable level of risk? Should these decisions be made by experts, or by the people they affect? How should safety and security be balanced against other goods, such as liberty? This is the first collection to examine the philosophical dimensions of these pressing practical problems. Leading scholars exploring the full range of philosophical implications of risk, including: risk and ethics risk and rationality risk and scientific expertise risk and lay knowledge the objectivity of risk assessment (...) risk and the precautionary principle risk and terror. With contributions from Carl F. Cranor, Sven Ove Hansson, Martin Kusch, Tim Lewens, D.H. Mellor, Adam Morton, Stephen Perry, Martin Peterson, Alan Ryan, Per Sandin, Cass R. Sunstein and Jonathan Wolff; this collection is essential reading, not only for philosophers and researchers in legal, economic and environmental studies, but for those seeking to gain a better understanding of the decisions we must make as concerned citizens. (shrink)

Whereas professional persuasion is a means to an immediate and instrumental end, ethical persuasion must rest on or serve a deeper, morally based final end. Among the moral final ends of journalism, for example, are truth and freedom. There is a very real danger that advertisers and public relations practitioners will play an increasingly dysfunctional role in the communications process if means continue to be confused with ends in professional persuasive communications. Means and ends will continue to be confused unless (...) advertisers and public relations practitioners reach some level of agreement as to the moral end toward which their efforts should be directed. In this article we advance a five-part test that defines this moral end, establishes ethical boundaries that should guide persuasive practices, and serves as a set of action-guiding principles directed toward a moral consequence in professional persuasion. The TARES Test consists of five principles: Truthfulness, Authenticity, Respect, Equity and Social Responsibility. We provide checklists to guide the practitioner in moral reflection and application of TARES Test principles. (shrink)

The evidence most of us have for our beliefs on global climate change, the extent of human contribution to it, and appropriate anticipatory and mitigating actions turns crucially on epistemic trust. We extend trust or distrust to many varied others: scientists performing original research, intergovernmental agencies and those reviewing research, think tanks offering critique and advocating skepticism, journalists transmitting and interpreting claims, even social systems of modern science such as peer-reviewed publication and grant allocation. Our personal experiences and assessments of (...) evidential indicators themselves may be buttressed significantly by trust, not just in. (shrink)

It has often been noted that Socratic cross-examination is problematic as a method of inquiry, i.e., as a method for 'acquiring' knowledge. Rarely has it been noticed that there are problems with cross-examination when used for the purposes of 'testing' for knowledge. In the 'Charmides', Socrates commits himself to the following principle: In order to discriminate between the person who knows and the person who does not know the subject matter covered by a particular discipline (technê), one must have mastered (...) that discipline. But if Socrates' disavowals of moral knowledge are sincere, it would seem to follow from this principle that, contrary to what Socrates says in many early dialogues, he cannot successfully test claims to moral expertise through cross-examination. Through an examination of the conditions that Socrates places on knowledge and on mastering a 'technê', I show how this problem can be resolved. (shrink)

Responsible public policy making in a technological society must rely on complex scientific reasoning. Given that ordinary citizens cannot directly assess such reasoning, does this call the democratic legitimacy of technical public policies in question? It does not, provided citizens can make reliable second-order assessments of the consensus of trustworthy scientific experts. I develop criteria for lay assessment of scientific testimony and demonstrate, in the case of claims about anthropogenic global warming, that applying such criteria is easy for anyone of (...) ordinary education with access to the Web. However, surveys show a gap between the scientific consensus and public opinion on global warming in the U.S. I explore some causes of this gap and argue that democratic reforms of our culture of political discourse may be able to address it. (shrink)

find myself believing all sorts 0f things for which I d0 not possess evidence: that smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer, that my car keeps stalling because the carburetor needs LO be rebuilt, that mass media threaten democracy, that slums cause emotional disorders, that my irregular heart beat is premature ventricular contraction, that students} grades are not correlated with success in the ncmacadcmic world, that nuclear power plants are not safe (enough) . . . The list 0f things I believe, though (...) I have no evidence for the truth of them, is, if not infinite, virtually endless. And.. (shrink)

Mainstream epistemology is a highly theoretical and abstract enterprise. Traditional epistemologists rarely present their deliberations as critical to the practical problems of life, unless one supposes—as Hume, for example, did not—that skeptical worries should trouble us in our everyday affairs. But some issues in epistemology are both theoretically interesting and practically quite pressing. That holds of the problem to be discussed here: how laypersons should evaluate the testimony of experts and decide which of two or more rival experts is most (...) credible. It is of practical importance because in a complex, highly specialized world people are constantly confronted with situations in which, as comparative novices, they must turn to putative experts for intellectual guidance or assistance. It is of theoretical interest because the appropriate epistemic considerations are far from transparent; and it is not clear how far the problems lead to insurmountable skeptical quandaries. This paper does not argue for flat-out skepticism in this domain; nor, on the other hand, does it purport to resolve all pressures in the direction of skepticism. It is an exploratory paper, which tries to identify problems and examine some possible solutions, not to establish those solutions definitively. (shrink)

Th is paper investigates the epistemic powers of democratic institutions through an assessment of three epistemic models of democracy : the Condorcet Jury Th eorem, the Diversity Trumps Ability Th eorem, and Dewey's experimentalist model. Dewey's model is superior to the others in its ability to model the epistemic functions of three constitutive features of democracy : the epistemic diversity of participants, the interaction of voting with discussion, and feedback mechanisms such as periodic elections and protests. It views democracy as (...) an institution for pooling widely distributed information about problems and policies of public interest by engaging the participation of epistemically diverse knowers. Democratic norms of free discourse, dissent, feedback, and accountability function to ensure collective, experimentallybased learning from the diverse experiences of diff erent knowers. I illustrate these points with a case study of community forestry groups in South Asia, whose epistemic powers have been hobbled by their suppression of women's participation. (shrink)

Feminist philosophers of science have been prominent amongst social epistemologists who draw attention to communal aspects of knowing. As part of this work, I focus on the need to examine the relations between scientific communities and lay communities, particularly marginalized communities, for understanding the epistemic merit of scientific practices. I draw on Naomi Scheman's argument (2001) that science earns epistemic merit by rationally grounding trust across social locations. Following this view, more turns out to be relevant to epistemic assessment than (...) simply following the standards of "normal science". On such an account, philosophers of science need to attend to the relations between scientific communities and various lay communities, especially marginalized communities, to understand how scientific practices can rationally ground trust and thus earn their status as "good ways of knowing". Trust turns out to involve a wide set of expectations on behalf of lay communities. In this paper I focus on expectations of knowledge sharing, using examples of "knowledge-sharing whistleblowers" to illustrate how failures in knowledge sharing with lay communities can erode epistemic trust in scientific communities, particularly in the case of marginalized communities. (shrink)

In the wake of the recent expansion of democratic forms of government around the world, political theorists have begun to rethink the nature and justification of this form of government. The essays in this book address a variety of foundational questions about democracy: How effective is it? How stable can it be in a pluralist society? Does it deserve its current popularity? Can it successfully guide a socialist society?

Communication by scientists with policy makers and attentive publics raises ethical issues. Scientists need to decide how to communicate knowledge effectively in a way that nonscientists can understand and use, while remaining honest scientists and presenting estimates of the uncertainty of their inferences. They need to understand their own ethical choices in using scientific information to communicate to audiences. These issues were salient in the Fourth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change with respect to possible sea level rise (...) from disintegration of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. Due to uncertainty, the reported values of projected sea level rise were incomplete, potentially leading some relevant audiences to underestimate future risk. Such judgments should be made in a principled rather than an ad hoc manner. Five principles for scientific communication under such conditions are important: honesty, precision, audience relevance, process transparency, and specification of uncertainty about conclusions. Some of these principles are of intrinsic importance while others are merely instrumental and subject to trade-offs among them. Scientists engaged in assessments under uncertainty should understand these principles and which trade-offs are acceptable. (shrink)

Epistemic systems are social processes generating judgments of truth and falsity. I outline a mathematical theory of epistemic systems that applies widely. Areas of application include pure science, torture, police forensics, espionage, auditing, clinical medical testing, democratic procedure, and the market economy. I examine torture and police forensics in relative detail. This paper is an exercise in comparative institutional epistemics, which considers how the institutions of an epistemic system influence its performance as measured by such things as error rates and (...) the volume of judgments generated. (shrink)