Workshop: Values in Science: New Perspectives and Directions,
On 25 September, we are organising a workshop in Cambridge with Daniel Steel (UBC), Wendy Parker (Durham) and Rebecca Kukla (Georgetown) speaking. Abstracts and titles below.
When: 10am-5.15pm, Tuesday 25 September.
Where: The Adrian House Seminar Room, Burrell’s Field, Trinity College, Grange Rd, Cambridge, CB3 9DH.
Everyone interested are welcome and attendance is free, but please email Rune Nyrup (rn330) before 9 September to register.
Best regards,
Rune Nyrup, Anna Alexandrova and Stephen John
Titles and abstracts:
Daniel Steel: Multiple diversity concepts and their ethical-epistemic implications (joint work w/ Sina Fazelpour, Kinley Gillette, Bianca Crewe and Michael Burgess)
" A concept of diversity is an understanding of what makes a group diverse that may be applicable in a variety of contexts. We distinguish three diversity concepts, show that each can be found in discussions of diversity in science, and explain how they tend to be associated with distinct epistemic and ethical rationales. Yet philosophical literature on diversity among scientists has given little attention to distinct concepts of diversity. This is significant because the unappreciated existence of multiple diversity concepts can generate unclarity about the meaning of "diversity", lead to problematic inferences from empirical research, and obscure complex ethical-epistemic questions about how to define diversity in specific cases. We illustrate some ethical-epistemic implications of our proposal by reference to an example of deliberative minipublics on human tissue biobanking."
Rebecca Kukla: The Social Epistemology of Maps
"A burgeoning branch of philosophy of science attends to the material and social production of scientific knowledge, and examines how interests are often embedded inextricably in scientific standards and methods. Cartography and geographic information science have not received this kind of analysis. To the extent that philosophers talk about maps, they generally discuss abstract visual representations isolated from their materiality or the context of their production. But maps are physical entities shaped by the technological, social, economic, and political conditions in which they are generated. They are also potent tools of social power. In this presentation I will examine the social epistemology of maps. I argue that there is no such thing as a neutral map; any map is structured by interest-ridden judgments about how to balance epistemic risks. I explore four ways in which values and interests are built into the production of maps and their epistemic functioning."
Wendy Parker: Taking user values seriously in climate services (joint work w/ Greg Lusk)
"Climate services are information products intended to help decision makers understand the relevance of climate and climate change to their decisions. Increasingly, it is emphasized that climate services will be most effective when they are responsive not only to the basic information needs of users, but also to their value systems and decision frameworks. Here we discuss one significant way in which user values can be incorporated into the provision of climate services, namely, in the management of inductive risk. Doing so involves understanding which errors in climate service products would have particularly negative consequences from the users’ point of view, and then prioritizing the avoidance of those errors. We identify several points in the provision of climate services where opportunities can arise to manage inductive risk in a way that serves user values: in the development, selection and analysis of models and data as well as in the communication of findings. Trying to manage inductive risk with user values in mind is, we argue, a part of ethical practice in climate services."
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Rune Nyrup, Research Associate, Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence
rn330; https://sites.google.com/view/runenyrup/home
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